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Terminals
| Mainframes were too expensive to be used by one
person. They were equipped with some quantity of terminal units,
sometimes known as monitors to allow many users to work with one machine.
First computers used teletypes as input/output devices. They quickly evolved to printing serial terminals - electronic printers with keyboards. Finally, display terminals with CRT tubes gained popularity. Later, many CP/M machines used only text mode, so it was just cheaper to use serial port terminal instead of designing a whole display circuitry from scratch. Terminals became more and more sophisticated, many units were little computers with Z80 or 8080 microprocessors. Polish industrial model made by Mera Elzab had shift reporting capability from data monitored on it. It was quite complex device with its own software. In late 80s, many offices decided to use terminals with modern PC technology. A high-end PC server with 386 or 486 processor had multi-user operating system and special serial port cards with 4, 8 or 16 ports (you can see them in this site too). Terminals were connected to this PC. These terminals are still in use today (2012) with Linux and Unix technology. I've seen working serial terminal network in Cracow's City Transport in one of end tram stations (?Krowodrza Górka?) where it supported ticket selling/accounting coordination reliably. Some smart terminals had pre-programmed form field editing capability, making this thing procesed independently of database systems. These terminals usually had buttons for programming which part of the form is field and how/when to switch between them. The only thing sent to mainframe was the data and the only thing received was form number and data to be displayed. |
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Some more photos of old terminals: - Early Regnecentralen printing terminal - Early Polish printing terminal (Mera) - Early Regnecentralen active terminal system - Printing terminal with magnetic reel recorder - Terminal with more modern magnetic tape recorder - Uknonwn terminal unit - Mera units in Elwro assembly plant |
And more modern ones: -K&K Lidia system (PC+4term) - 1987 -Budavox Hungarian terminals - 1987 -Polish Mera 7915OM (1987) (Src:IKS1987) -Terminals used in 1986 in ZUS Warsaw -Terminals used in 1986 in PLL LOT -Mazovia talking to 2 terminals - 1986 -Mera 79321 (source unknown) |
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(Sources of pictures above : "1000 słów o komputerach i Informatyce" and "Komputer" magazine)
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Peripherals and accessories (including PC expansion cards terminals):