Bad root password

[Dennis Handly]

Well, for the last N decades, I've never used the delete key. There was a delete char key on HP terminals. The del key always caused nasty things to happen (bad parity too?), so I never used it.

So when I'm on a PC, I don't know I can use that key and I so instead look for some menu or button I can mouse. :-(

[Bill Hassell]

OK, the TTY term refers to the classic ASR33 and ASR35 teletypes that were the only devices available back in the 50's and 60's as a computer console. Yes, both ASR models had a backspace key but as with 100% of all paper devices, the backspace key could *NOT* erase any character -- the ink is still on the paper. The only common use of the backspace key is to create hardcopy enhancements, specifically BOLD characters, by backspacing and retying the character several times, making it darker on the paper. This explains why looking at raw man pages will show lots of backspace characters.

So as a totally practical matter, erasing a character had to be visible and thus, you type a wrong character, then # to erase it and then the correct character -- which is how the default stty setting works in HP-UX.

The # character was picked because the RUBOUT character would punch a complete set of holes in the paper tape, effectively rubbing-out that character. Since # looks sort of like a bunch of rubouts on paper tape, that became the convention.

Starting with a patch at 11.00, a new device file is now available for changing selected default stty values, specifically kill and erase characters. The device file is /dev/ttyconf and works like this:

stty erase "^H" kill "^U" intr "^C" < /dev/ttyconf

Just issue this command and now all new terminal connections (except the console) will be set to the new defaults. And you can set the default value as a startup script so that it fixes the console at the next reboot (the console is always open when HP-UX is running). Standard /etc/profile and .profile files have this already but these profiles do not affect the login settings. Use ttyconf to fix the login/password issues.

As to why HP still continues to keep these truly archaic settings (also including 300 baud as the default serial rate), some questions are best left unanswered...just use the fix mentioned above.

More trivia: HERE-IS is called the answer-back key and in the old days of teletypes, the 'network' run mostly by Western Union, would require identifying that the remote terminal is the correct TTY. The local operator would issue a query to trigger the answer-back drum, a mechanical cylinder that had the tty's identification string. To trigger the drum manually, the operator would push the HERE-IS key. This is how HP's nifty terminal ID program works. Glass terminals adopted most of the tty features including answer-back and the program ttytype sends out the 3 major categories of answer-back characters, waiting for a second to see if anything is sent back. For instance, an HP terminal will respond to ESC ? at which point there are other sequences to obtain more details.

(Oh, I read about all this in a museum -- I'm much too young to have ever touched these old things...)

[Steven Schweda]

The HERE-IS mechanism can be seen in the
lower left of:

http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~djg/htdocs/asr33/pics/main_back.shtml?large

As I recall, the programming was done by
selectively breaking off those little
finger-like cams on the phenolic drum.
Better if you did it right the first time.
NVRAM is easier to change.

[OldSchool]

Gee guys, you're making my all misty-eyed w/ sentiment. I wonder what happened to
a) my old DEC-Writer (with the 1200 baud conversion thank-you-very-much)
b) boot tape for above on the V77-600 Sperry Univac
and my drum storage.