"DoN. Nichols" wrote in message
...
On 2016-09-01, Jim Wilkins wrote:
wrote in message
...
On Tue, 30 Aug 2016 20:07:08 -0400, wrote:

On Tue, 30 Aug 2016 13:50:31 -0700, Larry Jaques
wrote:

[ ... ]

If you're a touch typist, simply dot the F and J keys with a
mound
of
epoxy or fingernail polish, or superglue a rounded piece of
broken
key
to the tops. If you're not a touch typist, shame on you. You
should
have learned that by now. When computers came out, I sure was
glad
I
took typing in 9th grade.
Nott a touch typist, sad to say. I twisted rnches in hgh school
insead of tappng keys. Serverd me very well for 26 years.
When I retired and bought my first computer ('94), I got a typing
course on CD and worked on it religiously for a couple years.
Since
then I have reverted to the biblical method - "seek, and ye shall
find".

I learned at home -- *long* before home computers. My aunt had
a set of rubber caps to go over the keys, and a wall chart, and got
me
to type using the chart instead of the keycaps. I've been glad that
I
learned it ever since. (Of course, my handwriting is so terrible
that I
*need* to type. :-)

[ ... ]

I got into computers in the Teletype era, the early 70's. They
don't
delete mistakes and I decided I'd rather be slower entering the
text
and less embarrassed showing it to someone.

Slower -- no lower case, took a *lot* of force on the keycaps,
noisy, and the smell of hot oil. (ASR-33, FWIW)

*And* -- the ability to set the ASR-33 up to send an
identification string when asked by the computer or another terminal
on
the line. But once you set it -- you were stuck with it until you
got
some repair parts. There was a plastic drum with a bunch of flags,
which you broke off to set the characters to be sent. No way to
replace
the flags -- just the whole drum. You could *change* existing
characters to *some* others -- by adding bits (breaking off
remaining
flags).

http://answers.google.com/answers/th...id/386870.html

The VT100 terminal was a marvelous advance. It accepted codes in
instant messages that permitted messing up the recipient's screen
in
many creative ways, like making random letters break loose and
slide
down to pile up at the bottom of the screen, or a little
Pac-Man-like
sprite that would nibble a twisty path through your displayed
program.
They only disrupted screen memory, not the source.

Hmmm ... I've used VT100s (and later DEC terminals -- I still
have a VT-240 used for some things upstairs), but I didn't know
about
those codes. I could imagine a *program* doing that to the screen,
however, as there was a lot of cursor-addressing stuff built in
there,
and the ability to replace characters at need. (Hmm ... also
setting up
an area of the screen to be sent while the rest stays put.)

Enjoy,
DoN.

IIRC the crucial ANSI escape code sequence returned the screen
character at a designated position to the sender, which allowed them
to write a space to that position and resend the character one row
down, making the text appear to droop. I believe it was meant to be
used to save and restore the previous screen after sending a warning
message in a box.

The programmers pulled those stunts only on each other, usually when
they needed to compile and the recipient was playing a game that
bogged down the VAX. The player could change the name of the game
process but not hide its size from other users. I happened to be
watching when one hit.

I've used the same method to write a Matrix Waterfall screen saver and
a graphic display of a shift register's contents in an experimental
IC.

--jsw