AT&T 630 terminal - software ??

[Bill Mayhew]

In this case, yes.  The 630 MTG is pretty much a single purpose
computer with a ROM based operating system.  If memory serves me
right, when I opened up a 630 we had, there was a 68K CPU chip, 256K
of ROM and 512K of RAM inside.  Pretty much like a McIntosh Puls
sans disk drive, I suppose.

The 630 and the older BLIT terminal run a client / host protocol
called layers.  The Unix PC can be a layers host, but I don't know
if it can be a client too.

Unix Windows is a clinet / host protocol too, but certainly much
simpler than layers.  By the way, uw is available on Amigas,
McIntoshes and IBM hardware too.

The 630 will probably ultimately be upstaged by the X protocol, but
probably only in the sense that layers will disappear.  It should
be feasible to download an X environment client to run on top of the
firmware that is already in the 630.  AT&T could come out with new
ROMs for the 630 to run X natively, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

The most difficult aspect of the 630 to duplicate on an IBM clone
would be the physical display.  I don't know about all 630s, but
the one we had came with a full page 66 line display with a
resolution something like 720 * 1024 pixels (the exact number, I
forget).  All of the IBM clone full page displays I've looked at
are agonizingly slow at screen redraws; the 630 is not.


--Bill