terminals/term. servers

[Seth Benjamin Rothenberg]

We are going to be getting a UNIX machine soon, probably a DEC 5800.
We are considering how terminals should be connected to it.  We
were told that character input from hardwired terminals (as opposed to
virtual terminals)  causes cpu interrupts.  Is this true?  Would this
slow the machine down a great deal?  On our TI 990, our user systems
all use 'octacom' boards to handle line-editing; only complete lines and
control chars get sent to the cpu.
Most of the systems I know of use telnet (or LAT) logins almost exclusively.
Are hardwired terminals just as efficient?
One factor is that we have abot 100 terminals installed already,
so hardwiring would be easy, but we expect to double that soon,
so moving to ethernet would make that expansion easier.

Any comments, suggestions are appreciated.

BTW, if we go to ethernet, should we leave the existing wiring
in place in case of an "emergency"?


Thanks
Seth Rothenberg
sr16 at andrew.cmu.edu