modern terminals (was: printf, data presentation)

[Peter da Silva]

In article <11072 at ulysses.homer.nj.att.com>, ggs at ulysses.homer.nj.att.com (Griff Smith) writes:
> I'll repeat Doug's reply: the AT&T 630 terminal is available for less
> than $2k.  Support software for either System V or 4.3BSD is also
> available.  I don't think Doug is dreaming; if you're stuck with an old
> 24x80 non-windowed terminal, it's more like a nightmare.

Most of the UNIX systems in the world run Xenix, not System V or BSD. I
strongly suspect the majority of these Xenix systems are still running
System III-based kernels.

We have, let's see...
% wc /etc/passwd
    419   1663  36162 /etc/passwd

We have 419 accounts, maybe a couple of hundred real users (some accounts
are duplicates or administrative) on 30 Xenix systems and two SV systems.
We have, oh, at least 300 of these terminals. Replacing them would cost over
$600,000, which would be better spent buying disks and upgrading machines
to 386es. Or just buying more machines.

And, again, most of them would remain terminals. Our 30 Xenix boxes run old
SIII kernels. And we are locked into them by applications software (compilers
and networking).
-- 
Peter da Silva, Xenix Support, Ferranti International Controls Corporation.
Work: uunet.uu.net!ficc!peter, peter at ficc.uu.net, +1 713 274 5180.   `-_-'
Home: bigtex!texbell!sugar!peter, peter at sugar.uu.net.                 'U`
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