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Old 04-03-2012, 01:30 PM   #49
geekmaster
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Arrow "TTY speed" explanation (with video)

Quote:
Originally Posted by geekmaster View Post
titty - tiny tty (display tiny text on eink display)
...
hint: This runs at TTY speed.
For those too young to remember what "TTY speed" was, teletypes ran at "110 baud", or 10 characters per second. I could type faster than that, so I could not press the next key until the teletype mechanism would allow the key I was pressing to "go down" first. I still own an ASR-33 teletype.

When "glass teletypes" (CRT terminals) were available, they were able to do an "amazingly fast" 30 characters per second (3 times as fast). This was all the faster an accoustic-coupled modem could go, for online access. Back then, it was not legal to connect directly to telephone lines, and using an accoustic coupler was the ONLY way, so this 300bps was the maximum speed. Some BBS systems measured the width of bits you send when you press the Enter key to get a login message. I was able to adust my terminal software to get a fairly reliable local telephone connection at up to about 500bps, but at 600bps there were way too many bad characters getting corrupted over the connection. Because XMODEM protocol used by most BBS systems had built-in error-detection and packet resending, using these faster connections allowed much faster downloads (only 30 minutes to download a crude low-resolution picture of a naked chick.)

Modems that used compression were not available until "MNP-5" compression was introduced in the MultiTech 2400baud modem after the law was changed to allow direct connections to the telephone system. I still have my beta MultiTech MNP-5 modem that I purchased for the cheap wholesale price of $600 USD (back in the days when that was enough money to buy a very nice used automobile).

Even in the olden days before the Internet was open to the public (only universities, government and military), I had access via one of seven BBS systems that were connected to the Internet (for news and email). I had a real Internet email address even back then, long before the World Wide Web was invented. Later, when they opened the Internet to the public, state-of-the-art modem speeds had advanced to 14.4Kbps, and the WWW had a total of 250 web sites (but no search engines like Google, so you had to buy "Internet Guide Books" printed on paper).

Because the "300baud days" were before modem compression, that 300bps really was only 30 characters per second. To give you an idea of what this "amazingly fast" (at the time) online experience was like, just watch this video:


As you can see, the script-based text output from the "titty" program is much faster than the text displayed in that video.


Last edited by geekmaster; 04-03-2012 at 06:11 PM.
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