SWHITE@UA.BITNET (03/03/86)
Greetings fellow atarians: I resently sent a letter out to the mail-list asking about terminal emulators for the 8-bit machines. First, I would like to thank landon for his swift reply about chamleon. Let me explain about my situation before I go into the details of what I found. I am a student at the University of Alabama and like other computer centers around the country, mine decided that the frequent crashes of the computers meant that it was time to update the existing computing facilities. At the time we had a UNIVAC 1100/71 for academic work. When the bids came back we found ourselves looking at an IBM3081D. CMS was chosen to be the operating system for this new machine. All well and good, but it was also decided that this new system would be screen oreinted instead of line oreinted. I do not know exactly what all this means, but for dail-up service it meant going through a protocol converter, IBM 7171, sometimes know as a "Yalebox". About a year and a half ago I had purchased a 600XL and an 835 modem to use as a "dumb" terminal to the UNIVAC (I bought it because it was inexpensive needless to say I soon found out what great machines Atari are!). At this point in my life (1 1/2 years ago) I thought a stop-bit might be something that was placed at the bottom of a door to keep it open!! I never had to worry about such things because TELELINK II which came with the modem worked first time. Then I start finding out about stop-bits, parity-bits, word-size, etc, etc...but don't care because TELELINK worked so well (except with the 1027 printer, but thats another story). After the printer episode I consulted with the local users group and the consensus was that I needed a different terminal program. I went over to a guy's house who had a sizeable software collection and tried several terminal programs. I then found out that we use 7-bit words. Not one of the terminal programs that we tried allowed for this to be changed so nothing but TELELINK would work with the UNIVAC. When the IBM arrived I had a copy of vt10 squared all ready to go. But alas it also sent 8-bit words and consequently only about half of the character set could be sent. Back to the drawing board.... After pouring over hundreds of pages of manuals on the IBM 7171 and terminal programs for the Atari, I hit upon a section about using the 7171 with a standard ASCII typewriter terminal. Then I realized that actually the VT program is not a real VT emulator but an ASCII terminal with some key sequences redefined. Enter Chamleon a terminal program written by Jack Palevich.Just before my copy arrived I had received some bad news, it didn't allow word-size to be changed. Wishing for something magical to happen, I booted up Chamleon and low and behold it worked, provided I told the 7171 I was an ASCII typewritter terminal. If anyone needs to talk to such a machine, an IBM going through a protocol converter, good luck. With CMS the machine makes liberal use of a clear screen key which in ASCII typewriter translates into 24 blank lines. Notice I said 24 blank lines, not 24 CR, but 24 lines of 80 blanks then a CR. At 300 baud, 30 chars a sec.... it adds up fast. It is so slow...(Anyone know of a CHEAP 1200 baud modem???) also I can use none of the nice full-screen commands like filelist etc, etc. These commands cause the screen to be written but it also kicks you off the system. Sorry about the long file, sorry if it bored you, If anyone has any suggestions about my situation, if anyone is in the same situation please get in touch. I will be more than happy to share my experiences to anyone who thinks that it can in some way help them. thanks again for all who sent replies earlier craig BITNET: SWHITE at UA