Re: Architectural implications of locate mode I/O

John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> writes:

>
The 709 introduced data channels in 1958 which allowed the CPU to do
other stuff while the channel did the I/O. Wikipedia says the first
I/O interrupt was on the NBS DYSEAC in 1954 but it's hard to see how
an I/O interrupt would be of much use before channels. Once you had a
channel, I/O buffering made sense, have the channel read or write one
area while you're working on the other.

The day the CPU became faster than a teletype (or any other IO device
you care to name) interrupts became useful.  Get an interrupt saying the
teletype is ready, send a character, go back to work, repeat.