ordy@cwruecmp.UUCP (Greg Ordy) (01/27/84)
We are looking to get a couple of VT100 compatible terminals so that we can use the cursor based VMS editor, as well as several other VMS programs. These terminals require the following characteristics: *) Low Cost *) are truly compatible (no little quirks) *) work with vi and emacs under Unix (full 9600 baud) *) no brain damage (i.e. 'magic cookies') Things such as green screen and detached keyboard do not matter at all. Fancy graphics does not matter either. I would like to get any opinions on what to purchase. Please mail me any information. The one terminal that looks good on paper is the Televideo 970, which can be obtained for $910. I am a bit scared of Televideo, however, as some of their other terminals (920) have the 'magic cookie' problem, as well as other brain damage. Thanks, Greg Ordy Usenet: decvax!cwruecmp!ordy CSnet: ordy@case
guy@rlgvax.UUCP (Guy Harris) (02/04/84)
> We are looking to get a couple of VT100 compatible terminals... > These terminals require the following characteristics: . . . *) no brain damage (i.e. 'magic cookies') The ANSI X3.64 standard, which the VT100 adheres to, in effect says that magic cookies do not exist; any terminal with magic cookies can't be X3.64 compatible. (Furthermore, they can't even put the magic cookie in the display memory and not show it on the screen; they *must* implement the screen image so that it appears to the program talking to the terminal as if each screen position had a character and an attribute set, and that any character put on the screen gets the "current" attributes which are set by the SGR sequence.) As such, if the TeleVideo 970 has magic cookies, it's blatantly not VT100 compatible and not even X3.64 compatible, and they would probably not sell any after they were found out. I suspect you're safe if they claim VT100 compatiblility - however, the C. Itoh CIT-101 has a non-VT100 compatible printer port, which they had *no excuse* doing since there is a spec for an auxiliary output port in X3.64. First Datamedia used it, *then* DEC put a printer port on the VT100 - but both implementations were compatible because they were both based on X3.64. Guy Harris {seismo,ihnp4,allegra}!rlgvax!guy
mab@bnl.UUCP (Michael A. Bloom) (02/15/84)
Watch out! I've seen a number of so-called VT100 compatibles which are near useless with EMACS. A common firmware shortcut seems to be for the terminal to behave as though you pressed the SCROLL key when you have in fact pressed C-S. This is extremely frustrating to someone who likes making use of C-S and C-X C-S. The real VT100 does not present this problem. -- Michael A. Bloom ..!bnl!mab or mcb@mit-mc.arpa or mab@bnl