Gavin Scott wrote:

> So I give up.  Does anyone know what these goofy things are used
> for?

OK, I put on my nostalgia hat...

On MPE/V (classic) systems you did *not* have the "virtual" devices
we have today with NS/VT and telnet sessions.  You had to manually
configure a number of pseudo-terminals that NS [DS] could use as
ldev numbers.  These were VTERMs.  Actually this may be the original
HP proprietary DS/3000 implementation and may or may not be the later
more TCP/IP adherent NS/3000 on the classic.

I don't know that it means much, if anything, anymore.

I had an application (Series IIIs, DS/3000) that could open serial
terminals on remote systems to attach to a background job (exactly
like the MPE enhancement request for networked session sharing) but
only serial ports.  It used file equated DEV=envname#ldev constructs to
get there but would eat up a VTERM in the process (perhaps used by
NS/RFA?).

Jeff Kell <[log in to unmask]>