Last weekend I attended Vintage Computer Festival Midwest 18 in Elmhurst, Illinois. This year I didn’t set up a display table, but I did give a presentation as I have done in previous years. CelGenStudios has posted a nice walkthrough video that will give you an idea of the event.
The Architecture of Terminals
My presentation was titled What’s Inside a Terminal? A Comparison of Architectures (video at the link). As I’ve studied various models of terminal over the years I noticed that there were some similarities to microcomputers. This shouldn’t be too surprising as early microcomputers included: a CPU, a keyboard and a video display. Later model terminals included these same items, but with different capabilities tailored to their purpose as a video terminal, rather than as a general purpose computer. However, terminals predate microcomputers by a number of years and went through some earlier architectures tailored to their purpose as an interactive interface to a computer located elsewhere.