dave@mti.mti.com (Dave Stuit) (07/04/90)
>In article <3069@psueea.UUCP>, chuckn@eecs.cs.pdx.edu (Chuck Neal) writes: >> I have versions of TELCO up to at least ver. 2.3, and every one of them have >> failed to recognize escape sequences in every emulation mode. Has this problem >> been fixed? Or do you use something else for editing and reading news? I too have had problems with TELCO. First, I'll note that I haven't used it in about two years; my TI (a 4A) has been in storage and I was just thinking of retrieving it. So some of the problems may have been overcome already. (Unfortunately, I don't have the disk or docs handy, so I can't say what version I was using before.) My use of TELCO in the past has been mainly for access to UNIX systems -- i.e., strictly as a terminal emulator. The difficulties I had fall into two categories: (1) At high baud rates I lost characters. As I backed off on the baud rate, things improved around 2400 and most problems went away by 1200, if i recall correctly. I realize that I can't expect too much out of a 4A, and any performance improvements are likely to be small. I'd like to hear about experiences with the latest version of TELCO on a 4A. (2) Like Chuck, I've found the emulations to be incomplete. Of course, the docs didn't advertise 100% emulations. The completeness and accuracy of the emulations is not too big a deal to me, as I can always handcraft my own termcap entries. The problem I had was missing functions. Perhaps the biggest omission I found was that none of the emulations supported the line insert/delete capabilities of the emulated terminals. Applications on the host systems could emulate these functions by redrawing the screen from the cursor to the bottom. But this made it painful to use visual editors such as emacs, especially at the low baud rates supported. I don't mean to flame TELCO by any means. My compliments go out to Charles Earl (and to Paul Charlton for FasTerm) for developing some great applications. What I'm looking to find out is how TELCO might have been improved in the past few years. Also, what's the current status of FasTerm? (I switched to TELCO because its limited vt100 terminal emulation met a need I had at the time, but that's no longer an issue.) In article <664@compnect.UUCP> dave@compnect.UUCP (Dave Ratcliffe) writes: >Chuck, I'm using 2.3 with vt52 under uPort 386 Unix. For reading news I >use vnews (from the 2.11 BNEWS distribution) and my global editor is >MicroEMACS 3.9. Running Telco on a Geneve 9640 [...] Maybe the key to your success is the Geneve. How do the 4A and Geneve implementations of TELCO differ? --dave -- Dave Stuit ( dave@mti.com or uunet!mti!dave ) Micro Technology, 5065 E. Hunter Ave., Anaheim, CA 92807 (714)693-2396
dave@compnect.UUCP (Dave Ratcliffe) (07/11/90)
In article <1071@mti.mti.com>, dave@mti.mti.com (Dave Stuit) writes: > >In article <3069@psueea.UUCP>, chuckn@eecs.cs.pdx.edu (Chuck Neal) writes: > >> I have versions of TELCO up to at least ver. 2.3, and every one of them have > >> failed to recognize escape sequences in every emulation mode. Has this problem > >> been fixed? Or do you use something else for editing and reading news? > > (1) At high baud rates I lost characters. As I backed off on the baud rate, > things improved around 2400 and most problems went away by 1200, if i > recall correctly. I realize that I can't expect too much out of a 4A, > and any performance improvements are likely to be small. I'd like to > hear about experiences with the latest version of TELCO on a 4A. This still holds true. The interrupts for screen writes used in the TI are the problem. Telco can handle it but the hardware can't. > The problem I had was missing functions. Perhaps > the biggest omission I found was that none of the emulations supported > the line insert/delete capabilities of the emulated terminals. > Applications on the host systems could emulate these functions by > redrawing the screen from the cursor to the bottom. But this made it > painful to use visual editors such as emacs, especially at the low baud > rates supported. Again, still a problem even with the Geneve with a full PC style keyboard. I also have the Rave keyboard expansion kit for my TI and had the same problems there. I think the problem here is that Telco uses many of the 'special function' keys for control of the program so they become unavailable for the normal terminal useage. The disadvantages of software designed for a limited keyboard computer <sigh> > What I'm looking to find out is how TELCO might have been improved in the > past few years. Also, what's the current status of FasTerm? You probably HAVE the latest version of Fasterm. Paul has done nothing with it for several years. I think 1.16pc was the last except for a hack for 80 column cards and the Geneve. > In article <664@compnect.UUCP> dave@compnect.UUCP (Dave Ratcliffe) writes: > >Chuck, I'm using 2.3 with vt52 under uPort 386 Unix. For reading news I > >use vnews (from the 2.11 BNEWS distribution) and my global editor is > >MicroEMACS 3.9. Running Telco on a Geneve 9640 [...] > > Maybe the key to your success is the Geneve. How do the 4A and Geneve > implementations of TELCO differ? They don't. Same software runs on both machines. The difference is the CPU. The Geneve uses a TMS9995 which is a bit faster than the old 9900 and the VDP now is a 9938 instead of a 9918 so everything is handled more efficiently and quickly. The speed problems with the TI and Telco past 2400 bps are a result of the delay taken for the screen writes. I can use the Geneve talking null-modem to a PC at 9600 without a hiccup. Not even speeding up the clock on a TI would help much since you would start running into problems with the interrupts at faster speeds. One thing that MIGHT help a TI is to install the 32k on the main CPU card instead of in the PEB. I'll have to ask one of our local UG members who did this and see if it helped him. *>> Dave <<* [------: Dave Ratcliffe :--------:-: 2832 Croyden Rd. Harrisburg Pa. 17104 :-] : dave@compnect.uucp -or- : The Data Factory BBS : : uunet!wa3wbu!compnect!dave -or-: Data: (717)657-4997 - (717)657-4992 : : compnect!dave@uunet.UU.NET :...........................................] [........use what works..........]
dave@mti.mti.com (Dave Stuit) (07/13/90)
In article <697@compnect.UUCP> dave@compnect.UUCP (Dave Ratcliffe) writes: >In article <1071@mti.mti.com>, dave@mti.mti.com (Dave Stuit) writes: >> [lots of questions and some bitching and whining ;-) ] > [lost of answers with good info on TELCO, Fasterm, the Geneve, etc.] Thanks, Dave, for your replies to all my questions. >> The problem I had was missing functions. Perhaps >> the biggest omission I found was that none of the emulations supported >> the line insert/delete capabilities of the emulated terminals. >> [...] >Again, still a problem even with the Geneve with a full PC style keyboard. I suspect my original posting was unclear. Except for a few annoyances (like the DEL character *not* being the usual FCTN-V, and thus *not* touch-typable), i don't have problems with the keyboard. I don't like giant keyboards with lots of useless function keys, anyway. And the editors i use (jove [an emacs variant], vi, etc.) require nothing more than an ASCII keyboard, which the 4A/TELCO provide. The missing functions i was referring to are the host-controlled functions performed by the terminal (i.e., those described in termcap). Let me explain with an example. If i'm using my favorite text editor and i want to delete a line, i hit ^K twice. No problem. The editor gets two ^K's and the lines are gone, but now it has to update my screen. If i was using a Wyse 50, the editor would need to send only two characters: ESC R. This would cause the terminal to delete the line where the cursor was positioned, and move all lower lines up one to fill the space, leaving the bottom line blank. The editor knows this, and would then send the right characters to fill the bottom line on my screen with the next line of the file. Thus, no matter where my cursor is when i delete a line, no more than 100 characters (and sometimes only a few) have to be sent. The same goes for other "intelligent" terminals (vt100, tvi925, a210, to name but a few). But a "dumb" terminal (e.g., adm3a) isn't capable of doing much more than putting the cursor where it's told and displaying each character it receives on the screen. Thus when my editor wants to update my screen after i delete a line, the only way to do so is to redraw the entire screen, from the line i'm on to the bottom. This could be just a few characters (if i'm on the bottom line), or almost 2,000 (if i'm at the top). At low baud rates, this becomes pretty painful. Unfortunately, all of the partial emulations provided by TELCO fall into the dumb-terminal category. (It's not my intention to be trashing this fairware product that performs remarkably well considering the limitations of the video display processor, memory, etc. I'm just trying to figure out if there's a reasonable way to do what i'm trying to do.) --dave -- Dave Stuit ( dave@mti.com or uunet!mti!dave ) Micro Technology, 5065 E. Hunter Ave., Anaheim, CA 92807 (714)693-2396