miles@vax135.UUCP (Miles Murdocca) (08/27/84)
We have approximately 20 Televideo 970's, both leased and owned.
The first one worked great which fooled us into buying many more.
The problem is that no two Televideo 970's work the same way. The
SETUP menu differs from the manual that comes with the terminal
(drastically for some). Worse still, the terminals all seem to
work differently. They are set up to emulate everything between a
Televideo 950 and a Televideo 970. Some typical version numbers are:
TVS970/50A (this emulates a 950), TVS970/E, TVS970/D, and TVS970D.
They all need different termcap entries. We specified Televideo 970
on every purchase order, but got different internals. It's a nice
machine if /etc/termcap (where UNIX looks to find terminal characteristics)
agrees with the terminal. To our knowledge and the people we
rent/buy from, there is no way to change this emulation (except to
a pseudo-vt100 which we do not want).
Miles Murdocca, AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel, NJ vax135!milesdont@tekig1.UUCP (Don Taylor) (09/04/84)
X
We got version D's to evaluate, and found LOTS of problems. It was
promised that they would be FIXED with the version E that we would be shipped.
The E's were not much better and we complained. We were then sent version F
roms to install. This wasn't much better and again we complained. Now we have
been sent brand new pc card guts for the machine, and you guessed it, IT STILL
HAS PROBLEMS! Inquiring, we were told, 'Oh, you don't have up to date roms for
them, the NEW roms will solve ALL your problems.' We are currently running
TVS/GA970B and awaiting the roms that will fix all our problems. One small note
to consider is that we took delivery of these 10 (ten) months ago! and to this
day we still see the 25'th line being eaten every 73'rd line printed on the
screen. If anybody out there would like to pool some effort, I'd consider
disassembling the roms, tracing the pc board, and rewriting the firmware. The
new boards look to have some custom? lsi, and that probably removes that option.
If Televideo is listening, I'd like to see a termcap file that will run
at 9600 baud, use all 72 lines of memory, drop down to 24 lines inside of vi,
AND play well USING ONLY XON-XOFF. Things that can be left out are, eating the
status line, occasionally clearing the screen coming out of setup mode, randomly
finding previous lines and dumping them under the cursor, dropping DTR for a few
(or maybe many microseconds) coming out of setup. I could live without clearing
the screen when you tell it 80 columns and it ALREADY IS 80 columns. Ditto for
the number of lines in use.
My kingdom for an Ann Arbor Ambassador with a portrait screen, 60 readable
lines at once!
To the people who have asked for termcaps, I am frankly too embarrased to
comply at this time, I apologise.
Don Taylor
The above does not necessarily represent the opinions of my employer.