Information

Enquiry is a signal, which has a purpose of initiating a response at the receiving end, in order to make sure that it's still available.

Let's find out the meaning of enquiry in computer communications. Here enquiry means a transmission-control character that is intended to get the reply from the receiving station, with which was established a connection. Basically, enquiry is a signal that is purposed to initiate a response at the receiving end, in oder to make sure that it is still there. The reply is represented in an answer-back code to the exact terminal that sent the WRU (who are you) signal. The reply can contain station identification, type service equipment, and the current status of the remote station.

Teletype Model 33 answer-back drum (brown, lower center left) for implementing the function of coding inquiry response message.

There were some teleprinters, which had in their possession a "programmable" drum. It could keep approximately a 20 or 22 character message. The encoding of the message on the drum was performed by breaking down tabs off the drum. A sequence like this could be sent straight to the one, who would receive an enquiry signal, if it was possible. The other option was just to press the "Here is" key on the keyboard.

An enquiry character was possessed by the 5-bit ITA2. ASCII and EBCDIC, which were developed later, have adopted it as well.

In the 1960s, DEC decided to deactivate the function of answerback on Teletype Model 33 terminals. This happened because it wasn't compatible with the correct use of the paper-tape reader and binary data punch. Despite this fact, the DEC VT100 terminals, created starting from 1978 answered to enquiry using an answerback message, that could be customize to any user. Their successors have successfully adopted it.

Hash

MD5 Enquiry

SHA256 Enquiry

Base64 Enquiry

• ← Previous char 'EOT', code: 4
• Next char 'ACK', code: 6 →

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