There were also some more modern terminals called DECwriters but you had to get to class early to get one of those.
We had those and they did have a certain coolness factor. The unit was a keyboard and dot-matrix printer in one. It stood on a stand under which there would be a box of 132-column fanfold computer printer paper that fed through the unit from below.
It was featured on the July 1976 cover of BYTE magazine which showed Thomas Jefferson writing the Declaration of Independence on a DECwriter:
Redirect Notice (scroll down to third image -- could someone able to post images here please do so?)
In 1977, our university had an IBM S/370. Lower division students were required to use punch cards, but upper division students could get a VSPC account (Virtual Space Personal Programming). At the time, hardly anybody had a terminal at home, so we had to go to the computer center to log in. There were six DECwriters, each with a telephone and an acoustically coupled modem. We had a few 300 baud lines and several 110 baud lines; we were almost willing to kill to get a 300 baud line. I was lucky to have duty until midnight, so I would get to the computer center at about 0030 when the computer center was much less crowded than during the daytime and I would rarely have to wait for a terminal.
Later we got a few ADM terminals with dedicated 300 baud lines and another year or two later a couple other terminals on 1800 baud lines. I preferred the 300 baud terminals because I would read the entire file listing as it scrolled by, but I couldn't do that at 1800 baud.
We used VSPC mainly to write our programs (I think it used a line editor) and then to submit our job. VSPC also provided a version of BASIC, so I taught myself BASIC using David Ahl's computer games books as a model. Running Hamurabi and having the plague hit every single year made me realize that the RND function was different in VSBASIC than in Microsoft BASIC which the books were written in.
FWIW, the Google image collection of BYTE magazine cover art is at
byte magazine covers - Google Search .
Share and enjoy!
Edited by dwise1, : added having duty until midnightEdited by dwise1, : added request to have image posted