DECwriter
More info
- Creator
- Digital Equipment Corporation
- Released
- 1970
- Type
- Hardcopy terminal
DEC's hardcopy terminal, the machine that retired the Teletype as the default console — a dot matrix printer with a keyboard and a paper roll instead of a screen.
The LA30 arrived in 1970, but the LA36 DECwriter II of 1974 was the one that took over: 30 characters per second against the ASR-33's ten, 132 columns, and a print head of pins rather than swinging typebars. Quiet enough for an office and solid enough for a machine room, it became the default system console on the PDP-11 and later the VAX. The LA120 of 1978 tripled the speed again and added a setup mode on the front panel.
The point of a hardcopy terminal was that the session persisted: the roll was the scrollback, and a debugging run could be torn off and carried to someone's desk. Once video terminals got cheap, that single advantage stopped outweighing everything a screen could do, and the DECwriter was demoted to logging duty beside the rack.