ARDS terminals

ARDS, or Advanced Remote Display System, was ground breaking storage CRT display terminal technology developed at MIT in the 1960s. A company called Computer Displays Inc. was spun off to commercialize the technology. The terminals were mostly used with CTSS, but the AI lab PDP-6 and the Dynamic Modeling PDP-10 also had a few.

ITS retains some traces of ARDS support. The terminal type was removed in 1976 and replaced by Tektronix. There is a program called ARDPRN for displaying graphics files on a capable display such as Imlacs. The SUPARD program displays ARDS files using SUPDUP graphics; this works on a Knight TV. The -PICS- directory has pictures in ARDS format. The BIG music program can draw scores in ARDS format.