Re: [TUHS] Teletype simulator?

All this talk about Teletypes brings up memories. Model 33 TTY's were single case and each "key" (which was tubular) had to be pressed down over 1/4 inch to register. It was a significant effort. The model 37 TTY's that came along a few years later were upper and lower case (Unix was one of the few OS's at the time that could handle both cases smoothly). But if you opened the case, what was in it was an astonishing assembly of cams, levers, and other mechanisms. When glass TTY's came along, they took over quickly. One of my most vivid memories of "paper" TTY's happened at my home, early in my Unix experience. The TTY had a box of paper feeding it, and the output was also allowed to pile up behind it. This "used" paper served a critical role. At the time, Unix had two kinds of files -- small and large -- and if the system crashed (not uncommon in those days) when your file was in transition from small to large the contents of the file were lost. It was also frequently the case that updates were lost in files being edited. So when the system crashed, you would haul up the terminal output and highlight the changes that you made in case you needed to enter them again. This typically took a few minutes, by which time the system was up again and you could start to reenter your changes. So one day, I was heavily into editing when my wife, in the kitchen, needed help with the kids so I went to help her out, leaving the terminal running. It was several hours before I was able to get back to it, at which point I discovered that not only had the system crashed, but our cat had discovered an alternative "litter box" behind the terminal and made use of it! Luckily, it was pretty dry by then, but that didn't help the smell. And, so help me, holding my breath I marked the lines that needed to be reentered... The other TTY story that surfaced happened to Dennis. He had one of the last model 37's as his home terminal, and it was getting quirky. The vibration of the mechanism occasionally caused a blank space to be generated that he hadn't typed. In those days, it was common to delete the .o files after compiling because disc space was precious. So Dennis typed "rm *.o" and Unix replied ".o not found".