console (redirected from soothe)

(1) The physical control panel on a computer or electronic device.

(2) A terminal or desktop computer used to monitor and control a network.

(3) Any display terminal.

(4) The software user interface to any monitoring, management or control system. See Microsoft Management Console, HMI and OI.

(5) A game machine. See video game console.

Consoles that Were Consoles!

Up until the late 1970s, computers were designed with panels of blinking lights, which added to their aura of science fiction. The designs gave each computer a personality that is lacking in many of today's machines. (Top image courtesy of The Computer Museum History Center. Bottom image courtesy of Unisys Corporation.)

---

1.		console - The operator's station of a mainframe. In times past, this was a privileged location that conveyed godlike powers to anyone with fingers on its keys. Under Unix and other modern time-sharing operating systems, such privileges are guarded by passwords instead, and the console is just the tty the system was booted from. Some of the mystique remains, however, and it is traditional for sysadmins to post urgent messages to all users from the console (on Unix, /dev/console).
2.		console - On microcomputer Unix boxes, the main screen and keyboard (as opposed to character-only terminals talking to a serial port). Typically only the console can do real graphics or run X. See also CTY.