prindle@nadc (11/19/85)
From: prindle@NADC A company called Viewdata supposedly sells a vt100 emulator for the C64. The price is right ($2.50)(!). This includes an hour of time online for the Viewtron on-line service. I should be getting mine in a week or so (4 wks delivery) and will let this list know if it is for real and how faithful to vt100 protocol it is (for $2.50, I'm not expecting much, but then again, Viewdata is taking a loss on the software just to get more users on line, so it could be very good. The phone number to order the "starter kit" is 1-800-543-1300, Dept 9182 (it's an ordering service, not Viewdata). Viewdata's customer service number, for more details I suppose, is 1-800-VIEWTRON. Actually, a VT100 emulator is not much of a step up from a VT52 emulator, since neither terminal supports insert line, delete line, delete character, or character insert; these are the features which substantially improve a terminal emulation, and would be found in a VT132, etc. type emulator.
prindle@nadc (11/20/85)
From: prindle@NADC Well, I just received my program from VIEWDATA Inc. and it is *NOT* a vt100 terminal emulator, it is a NAPLPS terminal emulator. Apparently, the VIEWTRON system will work with a vt100, but works better (i.e. color, more facny graphics and fonts, etc.) with NAPLPS. Actually, the program also contains a crude ascii terminal emulation (with control codes for up, down, left, right, and clear) which could be used with a termcap were it not so botched up. But the NAPLPS mode (which is entered automatically when the VIEWTRON host sends certain escape sequences) is a different story and seems to work quite well. Since VIEWTRON, once it puts you in NAPLPS mode, stays in that mode, the package works quite well with VIEWTRON. And with a full description of NAPLPS protocol, one can probably write a termcap entry for it too (something I may do in the future). So, a VT100 emulator it's not, but still a nice package for $2.50 (which incl- udes a VIEWTRON user's guide and 1 hour on-line time). VIEWTRON is somewhat like an immature version of Compuserve. On-line time is $.09/min non-prime, $.22/min prime. Same for 1200 baud. The NAPLPS graphics are pretty thrifty on transmission time; however, on the C64 at least, the hi-res screen paints somewhat more slowly than conventional text at 1200 baud. To whoever was looking for the vt100 emulator, quest onward. Frank Prindle Prindle@NADC.arpa