ELECTRONIC PRINTING INPUT-OUTPUT STATION

摘要

An input-output station for a remote time-shared computer is described which has a high-speed electronic printer output and a keyboard encoder input. The output from the keyboard is temporarily stored in a one character buffer which serves as the input to the electronic printer and to an accumulator register comprised of parallel MOS shift registers where an entire line of characters are stored as they are printed. Only after the accumulator is full does the station respond to a poll character from the central processing unit to send the data through a parallel-to-serial converter and over the data link to the computer. The input to the computer is at the maximum rate at which the data can be transmitted, thus occupying the computer for only a fraction of the time otherwise required for the operator to enter the data direct from the keyboard. Data sent from the computer is routed through the converter to the buffer and is printed out by the high speed electronic printer at the maximum rate. This system provides for most efficient use of the computer by the input-output stations.