>> I've personally operated a green-screen terminal where there's a
>> 2-second delay between pressing a key and seeing the character on the
>> screen because it's a dumb terminal connected over a modem link to a
>> mainframe somewhere. After keying in several /very/ cryptic commands,
>> the line printer next to be sprang into life. And let me tell you, those
>> things are LOUD! I was using it to print benefits cheques for the local
>> county council, in around about 1997 or so. I doubt that their
>> infrastructure has been modernised since then...
>
> Even most dumb terminal had local screen management. That's why on most
> of them you had separate RETURN and ENTER keys. RETURN would simply move
> the cursor down one line, and ENTER would transmit the entire page (or
> all the filled-in filed, depending on your terminal).
>
> Yes, hitting ENTER on a partially filled-in screen would display the
> behaviour you saw, since the host end would simply tell you "hey, you
> didn't finish filling this screen!"

This one didn't appear to work that way. The characters literally didn't 
appear until a second or so after you typed them. (I have no idea what 
it was actually running on, but I assume some kind of modem...)

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