solomon (06/20/82)
We have lots of HP2621A's here at Wisconsin and like them very much. Reliability is a mixed bag. It seems that the innards (particularly the power supply) have been rather radically changed more than once without any change in model number. I have one in my office that I've had for over 3 years, which I use quite heavily, and the only problems were a dead battery after about a year and a half (the symptoms are not at all what you'd expect) and a bouncing key a short while ago that was easily fixed by cleaning the contacts. We do maintenance here and have found that getting schematics is rather difficult. As for the 2621B's, they really are garbage. The whole thing looks flimsier, lots of little details (like the sound of the bell) have been changed for the worse, configuration is by switches, and the whole thing costs considerably MORE than the A. But the real kicker is that at 9600 baud, the terminal is about 3/4 duplex. That is, while displaying lots of text at 9600 baud, it seems to pretty much ignore the keyboard. Also, if you use ^S/^Q handshake, it seems occationally to send a ^S and forget to send the ^Q. At $1500, I expect a terminal to be perfect or nearly so. Stay away from the 2621B. BTW, the VT100 seems to have the same 3/4-duplex problem, which, in addition to various other warts, makes me wonder why so many people seem to like them so much. Can anybody tell me of other terminals that suffer from the 3/4-duplex problem.