The DataPoint 3300 was the first

computer terminal A computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical hardware device that can be used for entering data into, and transcribing data from, a computer or a computing system. The teletype was an example of an early-day hard-copy terminal and ...

manufactured by Computer Terminal Corporation, later renamed

Datapoint Datapoint Corporation, originally known as Computer Terminal Corporation (CTC), was a computer company based in San Antonio, Texas, United States. Founded in July 1968 by Phil Ray and Gus Roche, its first products were, as the company's initial ...

, announced in 1967''The History of the TV Typewriter'', Michael Holley
/ref> and shipping in 1969. Since this terminal was intended to replace a

teleprinter A teleprinter (teletypewriter, teletype or TTY) is an electromechanical device that can be used to send and receive typed messages through various communications channels, in both point-to-point and point-to-multipoint configurations. Initia ...

such as those made by

Teletype Corporation The Teletype Corporation, a part of American Telephone and Telegraph Company's Western Electric manufacturing arm since 1930, came into being in 1928 when the Morkrum-Kleinschmidt Company changed its name to the name of its trademark equipment. ...

it was one of the first ''glass TTYs'' (glass for the screen, TTY as the abbreviation for "Teletype") ever produced. As well as being sold under its own name, it was also sold as the DEC VT06 and the HP 2600A (introduced in 1972).HP Computer Museum page on HP 2600A, access Dec 26, 2010
/ref>

Details

The Datapoint 3300 emulated a

Teletype A teleprinter (teletypewriter, teletype or TTY) is an electromechanical device that can be used to send and receive typed messages through various communications channels, in both point-to-point and point-to-multipoint configurations. Initia ...

Model 33, but went beyond what a Teletype could achieve with its paper output. It supported control codes to move the cursor up, down, left and right, to the top left of the screen, or to the start of the bottom line. The 3300 could also clear to the end of the current line, or clear to the end of the screen. It did not, however, support direct cursor positioning. It also had 25 rows of 72 columns of upper-case characters, rather than the 80 x 24 that would become more common in subsequent years.

Hardware

Like most terminals designed up until the mid 1970s, the Datapoint 3300 was implementated using

TTL logic TTL may refer to: Photography * Through-the-lens metering, a camera feature * Zenit TTL, an SLR film camera named for its TTL metering capability Technology * Time to live, a computer data lifespan-limiting mechanism * Transistor–transistor lo ...

in a typical mix of small-scale and medium-scale integrated circuits,''DataPoint 3300 Maintenance Manual'', December, 1976.
/ref> i.e. in a very similar way to how many

mini-computers A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a class of smaller general purpose computers that developed in the mid-1960s and sold at a much lower price than mainframe and mid-size computers from IBM and its direct competitors. In a 1970 survey, ...

of the 1970/80s (such as the

Digital Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits. Technology and computing Hardware *Digital electronics, electronic circuits which operate using digital signals **Digital camera, which captures and stores digital i ...

VAX-11 The VAX-11 is a discontinued family of 32-bit superminicomputers, running the Virtual Address eXtension (VAX) instruction set architecture (ISA), developed and manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Development began in 1976. In a ...

) were built. Later terminals (such as the

VT100 The VT100 is a video terminal, introduced in August 1978 by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). It was one of the first terminals to support ANSI escape codes for cursor control and other tasks, and added a number of extended codes for special f ...

) typically used a

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circu ...

to implement large parts of the user interface and general logic. At the time of its introduction, RAM was expensive (it would not be until 1970 that Intel released the

1103 Year 1103 ( MCIII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Levant * Spring – Bohemond I, Norman prince of Antioch, is released from Seljuk imprison ...

, the first

DRAM Dynamic random-access memory (dynamic RAM or DRAM) is a type of random-access semiconductor memory that stores each bit of data in a memory cell, usually consisting of a tiny capacitor and a transistor, both typically based on metal-oxid ...

semiconductor memory chip making RAM affordable). Thus, the terminal stored its display of 25 rows of 72 columns of upper-case characters using fifty-four 200-bit

shift register A shift register is a type of digital circuit using a cascade of flip-flops where the output of one flip-flop is connected to the input of the next. They share a single clock signal, which causes the data stored in the system to shift from one loc ...

s, arranged in six tracks of nine packs each, providing storage for 1800 6-bit characters. The shift-register design meant that scrolling the terminal display could be accomplished by simply pausing the display output to skip one line of characters.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Datapoint documentation
on bitsavers.org
Page with links to a doctoral thesis about early microprocessor history, with lots of details about Datapoint's role, and a copy of the Datapoint 2200 Programmer's Guide (both in PDF format)
– both with a lot of historical detail.
The man who invented the PCUnofficial Datapoint Organization WEB site
at datapoint.org Computing output devices Character-oriented terminal

Details

Hardware

See also

References

External links