Path: utzoo!censor!geac!jtsv16!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!armadillo.cis.ohio-state.edu!lum
From: lum@armadillo.cis.ohio-state.edu (Lum Johnson)
Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions
Subject: Re:  L
Keywords: deep trivia
Message-ID: <57174@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 9 Aug 89 14:54:20 GMT
References: <488@sppy00.UUCP> <57028@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <392@wet.UUCP>
Reply-To: Lum Johnson 
Distribution: usa
Organization: The Ohio State University, IRCC/CIS Joint Computing Laboratory
Lines: 33

In article <392@wet.UUCP> epsilon@wet.UUCP (Eric P. Scott) writes:
>In article <57028@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> Lum Johnson  writes:
>There is a CTRL key on IBM PC keyboards.  THere is also an ALT
>key that does something very different.  Perhaps you are thinking
>of IBM 3101 terminals?  Note: Some PC keyboards put CAPS LOCK
>where CTRL should be, and CTRL on either side of the space bar.

Actually, I'm not sure - I try to keep my hands off them.  :-)
I've recently heard of this ALT key, a shift key of some kind,
but I guess I'm not clear on what it is supposed to do.

>The major PC manufacturer that didn't learn about CTRL until late
>in the game was not IBM, but Apple!

True enough - it's that funny little "cloverleaf" thingie to the left
of the space bar, isn't it?  And all the documentation depicts this
cloverleaf thingie wherever there should be Carets or Uparrows.

>(BTW, ALTMODE on old ASR 33s sent 175 octal.)

Old Teletypes indeed used 175 for ALTMODE, 176 for ESCAPE, and 033 had
yet another name.  (?PREFIX?  If I recall correctly.)  Documentation
from MIT for programs like DDT (Dynamic Debugging Tool), developed
circa the ANSI X3.4-1968 revision of ASCII, generally refers to 033 as
ALTMODE.  (DDT has commands such as "$X" (ALTMODE X) for single-step
and "$$X" (ALTMODE ALTMODE X) for stepover-routine.)

Lum
-=-
-- 
Lum Johnson      lum@cis.ohio-state.edu      lum@osu-20.ircc.ohio-state.edu
"You got it kid -- the large print giveth and the small print taketh away."
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