[rescue] DEC keyboards

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 @ 14:41 -0500, Sridhar Ayengar said:

> > I've never liked the UI on any of them myself.
> 
> I don't mind the UI on the older ones myself.

It's not bad, just never very good.

I think some of the Esprit models had a lot better firmware.

I can't really say I'm that impressed with any of them so far.

> > It seems to pass the vt100 test.
> 
> I've not had any problems with using them with VT100 codes, but they 
> don't work that great emulating a VT220 or VT320.

You know... I think I might have seen that, not sure.

One oddity I do see: I frequently find the terminal gets a lot of ?????
all over the screen, the indicator that it is unable to keep up with the
serial port.

However, it only happens when used on Sun equipment.  At 38.4Kbps, the
terminal drops characters on my U2.

At 115Kbps on my PC, it never misses a beat.

I've tried for years to solve this, but never have been able to so
far. I figured it was stty settings, but I'm unable to see what or do
anything about it.

It's rare enough I don't really care, but annoying.

I also get into a situation on Sun's where the screen codes stop
working, and it hangs on the last line of the display. Two line prompts
also give me grief.

Again, it never happens when hooked to a PC, even with the same
operating system running.

> > There were things about how they worked I liked better in the 320, but I
> > needed more speed, and being able to use PS/2 keyboards was nice.
> 
> Does the VT420 have the same speed issue?

I don't know, I never could snag one of those.

Lately I haven't been using my terminal because I had to stuff it on a
shelf, and I got rid of my vt320.

I'm looking to locate one on a desk where I do a lot of writing and
reading. A terminal is good enough for writing and doing minor tasks,
and has the advantage of being silent and small.

I just need to find a way to route the rs232 cable.

I will also probably need a multi-port terminal adapter for my U2.  I
hate the big ugly ones though.

> Nope.  ASCII and RS-232/RS-422.

Yeah, I looked up the 3153.  It seems kind of nice.  

There are three of them on ebay as a lot for $9, but the shipping is
$67.

I don't need three, so I'm not willing to pay that much shipping.

The other 3153's I saw were north of $100.

> > You mean block mode as in page oriented terminal, or something else?
> 
> Yes.  Page-oriented.  I doubt it's possible, but on the off chance, I'd 
> like to use it that way.

Some of the IBM terminals also have an AS/400 mode.

Not sure how you'd use it with UNIX though.

-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- ["Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny." --
Unknown]