CONSIDERATIONS FOR MICROPROCESSOR-BASED TERMINAL DESIGN Reid G. Smith '

The discussion centers on a specific video terminal designed and constructed by the authors. This terminal is based on the Intel 8080 microprocessor and is equipped with software sufficient to emiflate the characteristics of standard video terminals required by eral available screen -oriented text editors in common use at sites throughout the ARPAnet (such as E [Samuel, 1978] and TV-Edit [kanerva, 1975]). Screen-oriented editors2 differ from other editors In their use of high-speed video terminals to display the contents of large sections of a file being edited. As editing operations are performed, the display Is revised to indicate their effects on the file (i.e., editing operates In a What you see is what you get mode). Such editors require ter.linals capable of primitive text-processing operations, such as inserting a character in a line of text by shifting the existing characters. In addition to such capabilities, the terminal is typically expected to support 8-bit transmission (instead of the usual 7 bits plus parity), selectable modes for displaying characters (e.g., normal or inverse video, blinking, or dual intensity), and an 80-character line width.