[Simh] Tell me about console terminals and related things

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2016-02-14 21:11, Zachary Kline wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> So as I delve into VMS and related concepts, I’ve come across mention of console terminals and “operator’s consoles.”
> I gather that SIMH simulates one of these when the machine starts up, but I’m a bit less clear on how this compares to the real hardware.
> When the VAX boots, it obviously has a prompt for boot options and such. Would this be displayed on, say, a VT100 somewhere?

Yes. A VT100, or more commonly a printing terminal, so that you have a 
paper trail of what was written preserved for later.

> I gather SIMH itself doesn’t do much terminal emulation, so it might be worthwhile sending the console output to another emulator which could handle the keyboard and such.
>
> I guess this depends quite a bit on the OS and machine in question too. :)

You always do. What do you think that window in which you are running 
simh is? It's a terminal emulator. Or are you running simh from a serial 
line? In which case, you must already be using a real terminal, or how 
did you otherwise start simh?

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol