terminals/term. servers

[Sam Bassett RCD]

In article <wZ_XRne00WB4I4M4kT at andrew.cmu.edu> sr16+ at andrew.cmu.edu (Seth Benjamin Rothenberg) writes:
>We
>were told that character input from hardwired terminals (as opposed to
>virtual terminals)  causes cpu interrupts.  Is this true?  

	This very much depends on the design of the serial interface
board in your DEC machine -- some do, and some don't.  Pioneer is an
ancient VAX 11/785, and we swapped out some interrupt-on-character serial
boards, and speeded up the system something fierce.
	What you need to do is hold the DEC salesperson's feet to the
fire about the serial boards -- if you have a DEC C.E. around handy, ask
him/her/it which boards do & don't cause keystroke interrupts.

	BTW -- we have quite a few Annex boxes from Encore around here,
which take up to 32 serial lines and put them on the Ethernet -- as I
understand it, they cost in the high 5 to low 6 digits -- very
convenient.


Sam'l Bassett, Sterling Software @ NASA Ames Research Center, 
Moffett Field CA 94035 Work: (415) 694-4792;  Home: (415) 969-2644
samlb at well.sf.ca.us                     samlb at ames.arc.nasa.gov 
<Disclaimer> := 'Sterling doesn't _have_ opinions -- much less NASA!'