CDC 6000 Series - Display Console

Display Console

In addition to communication between peripheral devices and peripheral processors, communication takes place between the computer operator and the operating system. This was made possible by the computer console, which had two CRT screens.

This display console was a significant departure from conventional computer consoles of the time, which contained hundreds of blinking lights and switches for every state bit in the machine. (See Front panel for an example.) By comparison, the 6000 series console was an elegant design; simple, fast and reliable.

The console screens were calligraphic, not raster based. Analog circuitry actually steered the electron beams to draw the individual characters on the screen. One of the peripheral processors ran a dedicated program called "DSD" (Dynamic System Display), which drove the console. Coding in DSD needed to be fast as it needed to continually redraw the screen quickly enough to avoid visible flicker.

DSD displayed information about the system and the jobs in process. The console also included a keyboard through which the operator could enter requests to modify stored programs and display information about jobs in or awaiting execution.

A full screen editor, called O26 (after the IBM model 026 key punch, with the first character made alphabetic due to operating system restrictions), could be run on the operator console. This text editor appeared in 1967—which made is one of the first full screen editors. (Unfortunately, it took CDC another 15 years to offer FSE, a full screen editor for normal time-sharing users on CDCs Network Operating System.)

There were also a variety of games that were written using the operator console. These included BAT (a baseball game), KAL (a kaleidoscope), DOG (Snoopy flying his doghouse across the screens), ADC (Andy Capp strutting across the screens), EYE (changed the screens into giant eyeballs, then winked them), PAC (a Pac-man-like game), and more.