This is very similar but unfortunately not identical to the so-called 3270 terminals used by IBM mainframe computers. Therefore, I wrote a little C program to translate between the differing protocols of 3270 and 3151 terminals enabling a 3151 to be connected to a mainframe.
I made a video describing a little bit the 3151 terminal and the interface program and showing how it looks like to work with the (emulated) mainframe on an 3151. The source code and Windows binary are on github for you to try out, if you happen to have a 3151 terminal. The link is in the description of the video.
The HP 2648A terminal also had a "block mode", and the RTE screen editor used it. It was one of the first screen editors I ever used (in 1984). (I had used WordStar on CP/M as early as 1979.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBCDIC
https://terminals-wiki.org/wiki/index.php/HP_2648A
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/hp/1000/RTE-A/92077-90039_RTE-A...
Generally this is true. But around this era I used a ton of 3151 terminals on AIX, IBM's version of Unix. They were connected to the RS/6000 line of AIX machines. Good times! These machines, as Unix machines, talked in ASCII to their terminals. There was a whole line of port concentrators which would like you connect something like 32 ASCII terminals to a little block about the size of a modern ethernet router, and you could connect 4 of so of these blocks to a device in the main machine.
The 3151 was designed to integrate with other systems where ASCII was already prevalent.
As someone who wishes more people got some programming exposure to IBM z and how it works differently than minicomputer derived operating systems (both *nix and Windows count here), I think this is awesome.
Yes there's a hierarchy (with . as a separator), but it's more naming convention than a description of the underlying filesystem. You can create projects.foo.code.bar without having any entity (like a Unix directory) for projects.foo first.
I was trying to get around it on SimH, with the B5500 version. Definitely deserves the name.
I think MS-DOS comes from CP/M which was also sort of rooted in the minicomputer era.
-- Mark Lucovsky
Distinguished Engineer, Windows Server Architect
https://web.archive.org/web/20110720042038/http://www.winsup...
H>I
A>B
L>M
Most People seem to at least know that mainframes and Cobol exist, even if they've never seen them. IBM I (and its primary language, RPG) are similar in importance to the global economy and just as different from Nix and Windows systems, but they seem to be far less known.
They're also far easier to get access to, there's a free modern system that you can get an account on at pub400.com. With Z/OS, you're stuck with Hercules emulating some ancient version from the 80's which there's barely any documentation for.
IBM provide free 1-year Z access via the Zxplore program.
Guidance and discussion:
I worked with one at a chemical company back in the 90's, and they were wonderfully efficient. Only send a single chunk of data when needed, not a constant stream of individual keypresses that have to be interpreted and processed.
Case in point: in the late 90s I was a user of a product called SNAP-IX, that aimed to convert between SNA/terminals and TCP/IP client server. It was produced by a small UK company, Data Connection, that then got swallowed up and repurposed and ultimately eaten up by some cloud company, and all the documentation, manuals, specs, and knowledge evaporated. Somebody somewhere might have a pdf library, but you'll never find it. They had kept that product going for 25 years. Pfft. Gone.
extricating terminal interfaces whether in binary, object-oriented abstracted languages is a feature in UNIX paradigms
https://www.amazon.co.uk/AWADUO-Charging-Extension-Compatibl...