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This seems like one of the times when ed would be a legit editor of choice, rather than the other examples here which seem more like editors of last resort.

ed was built for this kind of system where limited I/O was a requirement for reasonable performance. If transferring a file is too expensive, you can't wait for the system to redraw the entire screen of 25 lines and 80 columns because you scrolled past the bottom of the screen, either.

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As an example, one I often used for persuasion during sales, we had to dial into a location, which gave us access to a corporate network. From there it would VPN into an offsite office. From there I would connect with point to point radios 10 miles apart to a Gas rig running on solar panels. The radios had huge SNR numbers because they were near other commercial comm systems, high power power lines and were mounted on masts that would sway in the wind.

To load up a 25x80 area would give me all sorts of bad characters. Doing single lines, and find and replace made it almost feel like I was right next to the hardware.

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