13 Mar
2023
13 Mar
'23
4:49 p.m.
Paul Ruizendaal via TUHS <tuhs(a)tuhs.org> writes:
Thinking a bit more about terminal multiplexing was a
major use case for early X, I recalled using Linux virtual consoles in the late 90’s for
this purpose.
According to Wikipedia, virtual consoles originated with Xenix and before that with
concurrent CP/M.
Perusing the documentation of those on Bitsavers, I can see that virtual consoles have a
prominent mention in the manual for concurrent CP/M (1983), but not those of its
forerunners MP/M II and MP/M (1979). I cannot find a mention of virtual consoles in Xenix
documentation as late as 1988.
No such thing as a virtual (as distinct from pseudo) tty on 16-bit Unix or early 32-bit,
as far as I know; one could argue it does not make much sense with physical terminals.
Wikipedia says no such thing existed on SunOS either.
I think virtual consoles where present in Linux from a very early point.
So, as far as I can tell virtual consoles were invented for concurrent CP/M around 1983,
made their way to Xenix in the late 80’s and became part of Linux in the early 90’s.
Have I missed other prior art?
Not Unix, but OS-9 Level II on the CC3 had them. Not exactly a console,
as a fixed console device really did not exist in the same way as Unix
on OS-9, but multiple shells each running in their own screen with
different sizes if I recall correctly. This would have all been in the
early to mid 1980s in a 8/16 bit environment.
--
Brad Spencer - brad(a)anduin.eldar.org - KC8VKS - http://anduin.eldar.org