rescued a beehive!

From: Chuck McManis <cmcmanis_at_mcmanis.com>
Date: Fri May 19 16:40:36 2000

>Hmm. This might have been before your time, but I might as well ask:
>got any stories to tell about the Hazeltine 2000?

Oh if we're going to get funky lets talk about the (in)famous "MicroBee",
the original Beehive terminal. This two ton, white painted, monstrosity
weighed in at about 40 lbs even though the terminal wasn't much larger than
VT340. The display was a blurry blueish white on blackish green. The thing
only had 20 lines and only 72 characters on those lines. Cursor control was
nearly non-existent. I believe the "backspace" sequence was go to the front
of the <CR> and then forward space until you got to the place to stop. It
had "bold", and "blink" but these involved putting format characters into
the screen memory that printed as space so you could have a half bold word,
you always got a space in there!
If you deleted the "format char" all characters passed that acquired the
previous format.

It was considered extreme kung-fu to get FINE (a TOPS-10 emacs clone) to
work at all on the thing. (oh and it sent ^S, ^Q (couldn't prevent it) if
you talked to it over 2400 baud)

--Chuck
Received on Fri May 19 2000 - 16:40:36 BST