[GreenKeys] Using a 1930 Teletype as a Linux terminal

[Jim Haynes]

Years ago I worked with a Burroughs B-5500 mainframe computer.  The
internal character set was 6-bit BCD, so it was upper case only.  We
used Model 33 Teletypes as terminals, and a few CRTs.  For most of
the computer languages - BASIC and ALGOL and FORTRAN and COBOL the
operation was pretty straightforward.  But some group developed an
APL interpreter for the machine.  Now that was something since APL
has a huge character set.  Using the 33 many APL characters required
two-character sequences to generate the characters, and of course
they didn't print correctly either.  I don't know if anybody ever
persevered to really use APL on that machine, but it was an 
accomplishment, to say the least.

The B-5500 was really superb as a batch job machine, and very poor
as a time-sharing machine.  Some installations used a monitor called
R/C or Remote/Card.  This used the batch operating system but allowed
using terminals to create virtual card decks and view print files.
That was very similar to a system called Wylbur that ran on the IBM
360 family of machines, which were equally lousy at batch and time
sharing.

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 	"Ya can argue all ya wanna, but it's dif'rent than it was."
 	"No it ain't! No it ain't!  But ya gotta know the territory."
 		Meredith Willson, The Music Man