paul@vixie.UUCP (Paul Vixie Esq) (08/12/86)
I stopped getting replied to my "**real** 19200 CRT" article; here are the
raw replies. I removed mail headers, .signatures, and included text; I
corrected spelling errors when I noticed them.
The fastest terminal anyone below has heard of is the Wyse {30,50,75}. I
have used this terminal, and the keyboard makes me crazy -- also there is
the magic cookie issue; I like my attributes better hidden than that.
I'm looking for a file called INFO-TERMS or some such; it is somewhere at
MIT, and is the result of a massive search for fast terminals back in the 70s.
If you can have or can get this file, please mail it to me.
Many respondants did not understand my query, and suggested terminals which
run at 19200, but require one form or another of handshaking. I want a
terminal that can perform ANY operation in the time is takes to transmit one
character at 38400, serial, 7-bit no parity. Operations include drawing the
character, erasing, clearing, inserting, deleting, scrolling, and mode setting.
This means that between the time the last bit of the last byte of an escape
sequence is received, and the time that the last bit of the following byte
(whether it be ESCape or any other), I want the terminal to *do* whatever it
has been asked to do. No buffering. No throttling. No handshaking. No
control-S, no DTR, no CTS, no nothing. Do every operation in 1/38400'th of
a second. 1/19200'th of a second will do as a second choice. There is no
third choice.
One person recommended that I build my own. I'm not that good with hardware;
I can build from a schematic but I don't really understand how things work.
Several people reccommended that I get a PC and run a terminal emulator. As
has been hashed out rather thouroghly on the net, no known PC has hardware
scrolling and there is therefore at least one operation that cannot be
performed in 1/19200'th of a second. I'm using a Zenith Z100 PC to type
this; it can't even do 9600 without handshaking.
I'm still looking. The market for this device seems to consist of exactly
one person, me -- so I don't think the trend in terminals is going to go
where I want it to, and I am not hopeful of success.
Thanks to all who replied; the info was helpful. Responses follow.
Paul Vixie
{crash,winfree,fortune,qantel,hpsemc}!vixie!paul
----------- --------- ------------- ------------ -------------- ------ -------
From: deneb!ccrdave (Kahless tai-Hazar @ Imperial Propoganda)
I believe the Wyse 75 will do 19200. It's magic cookies, but if you
just use a vt100 termcap you don't get the space problems with the
"highlight" mode, i.e. you get your choice of reverse video OR underline,
just not both. It's ansi emulating, and has a detachable screen, and
it's only $450 or so. The manual says 38400, and I've never had any
troubles at 19200 on a UNIX box... may be a cheap solution.
From: petrus.bellcore.com!wmk3 (Bill Keese 3rd)
How about the old blits, made by bell labs with a 68000 chip?
I know they run at 19200, but I don't know about flow control.
The blits have since been replaced by "DMD's"/"5620's" which
only run at 9600.
From: dosadi!root (Dave Edick)
I have two for you. The Wyse 50 and the Lear Sigler ADM3E. The Wyse can
run 38,400 without handshaking if your machine can handle it. The 3E is
a more modern version of the 3A with emulation for other terminals, detached
keyboard, tilt/swivel, etc. The Wyse is available for under $500 and the
3E is available for under $300. We're using 3E's in quantity (replacing
all our old terminals with them) where I work. We have a couple Wyse's,
but there aren't too many people who like the keyboards. Usually the only
people who use them are the ones who are willing to live with the keyboard
to get 132 columns.
From: Rick Adams <lll-crg!seismo!rick>
The wyse75 I am typing on runs at 19.2 kbaud with no padding and
cost $500.
From: ihnp4!drutx!druak!mab (Alan Bland)
I've heard that the AT&T Teletype 5410 terminal can handle 19.2K
without flow control, but that is second-hand information. It does
have all of the other nice features you're looking for. I've used
it at 9600 and like it. Beware, however, that the AT&T 5420 and 5425
terminals are relatively slow, and can't handle 9600 without flow control.
(but they're fancier than the 5410).
From: ihnp4!cbpavo.cbosgd.ATT.COM!mark (Mark Horton)
Your list of requirements sounds very similar to what the INFO-TERMS
folks at MIT were looking for in the mid 70's. You might ask around
at MIT to see what they use there, and find a terminal expert there.
(I seem to recall that Chuck F. [Can't remember last name, initials
and login were CBF] was one such guru. Try CBF@MIT-MC.ARPA. Frankston,
maybe, is his name?)
There is/was also a file called INFO-TERMS at MIT somewhere with
collected comments.
I seem to recall they had some Datamedia terminals they liked,
but it's been a long time. I also suspect they were dealing
with 9600 baud.
From: qantel!stv (Steve Vance)
I run my Televideo 950 at 19200 without any problems. Has all the
basic requirements you listed, and all bonus requirements except it
uses a magic cookie for attributes and doesn't have ANSI x.64. Their
model 970 has ANSI, but that's about all I know about it.
From: Mark LaCasse <hplabs!sdcrdcf!randvax!lacasse>
I'm using an Ann Arbor Ambassador in my office at 19,200. Its connected
to a Vax 11/780, direct wired with 500+ feet of telephone wire (not even
twisted pair!). The Vax runs 4.2BSD, the line is on an Abel DH11.
I have never had a problem lossing characters.
Mine is the old black-front "landscape mode" (wide) ambassador. The
company has not replaced this with the "XL", which is tall, white,
prettier, has mushier keys, and a coiled phone cord to the keyboard. (The
old one I'm using has a better keyboard, connected with a flimsy ribbon
cable, which can be extended, and emits lots of RFI). Both terminals are
ANSI, have green screens, display 18 to 60 lines (about 5 choices)
software selectable, 80 wide, have all the cursor/ins/del/attrib commands
you could want and no magic cookie.
I understand the new XL can not keep up under certain conditions, but I
don't know what conditions. Rand runs 100's of them at 9600, and they
keep up fine doing everything except long keyboard-download operations.
I've never tested one at 19,200.
The XL costs about $1400, and ealier Ambassador used to sell for about $1,100
and can be had used for $500. (A disreputable local dealer, the Jamison
Carlyle Company, DJC, sells them used for example.) Service is more-or-less
ship it to the manufacturer (Ann Arbor, Michigan). But they don't break
often.
Please send my whatever you find out about how different terminals keep
up at 19.2 and beyond.
From: Marc Mengel <gatech!cuae2!ltuxa!cuuxb!mwm>
Sounds to me like you ougt to go get yourself a 68020 or a 32032,
some bitmapped video display hardware, some ttl buffers and
latches, and do the whole thing yourself from scratch... Maybe
look at some MIDI (digital synthesizer interface) circuitry for
high speed serial reading.
From: Bill Rainey <hplabs!utah-cs!stride!bill>
Try a Wyse WY-50 terminal (but not a Wyse WY-30). We use them
on our Stride systems at 38400 with GNU Emacs with no flow control and
they work fine. They do have the magic cookie problem though but that
is mostly invisible to a user.
From: hplabs!pyramid!ranhome!randy (Randy Horton)
I think that the Fortune terminal (old model) may do what you want. I know
that it does run at 19.2 Kbaud. I have seen them running at that speed, with
the Fortune menus doing LOTS of screen painting, and they seem to have no
trouble keeping up. They also have detached keyboard and tilt/swivel
monitor. They do have video attributes. As far as the clear to eol, and the
other things, I don't have the time to go look it up, but someone in Fortune
customer support might be able to help you. You might be able to get one of
these at San Carlos Computer Supply at a discount price also. Note that this
is the OLD model Fortune terminal I am speaking of (I think that it is called
the FOR 1000), not the newer FIS 100 model. I have not heard much good about
the newer model. I have however had much good personal experience with the
old model. I have one here at home running at 19.2 actually.
From: hplabs!hpisla!hplsla!tikal!sigma!bill (William Swan)
I believe the Televideo 925 (and other models) run at 19200 with no problem.
I use it on my CP/M system with WordStar (which *hates* XON/XOFF) with no
trouble.
It's been years since I looked at the interface.. but you might want to look
at those terminals.
From: hplabs!cae780!tekig4!dont (Don Taylor)
This is not to be construed as any sort of advertisment, but I have the
following experience. We were trying to run a terminal fast for debug
output. This was both at 9600 and 19200 baud with no intercharacter delay.
A Televideo 970 could not keep up well at 9600 and really blew its mind at
19200. An Ann Arbor Ambassador did fine at 9600 and pretty well at 19200.
A Tektronix 4105 or 4107 color raster terminal with <=155 lines of local
memory to hold text could not be confused with full tilt 19200 baud. We
do not have the ability to run at 38400, but the manual claims that it will
support it. The thing has 3 completely different escape modes it can be in,
ansi, tek graphics, and vt52 modes, each with enough commands that I have a
hard time finding which command to use in the lists.
Again, this is not meant to be a sales pitch, I do not work for that division
of the company, but even so am not able to recommend to outside people that
a Tektronix product is or is not suitable for a given task. If you would
like further information, I suggest you contact a sales office and tell them
that you would like to see a demonstration, I am sure that they would be able
to help you evaluate the terminals.
From: Bob Peirce <gatech!allegra!pitt!investor!rbp>
Have you looked at the Falco Fame II? We have several in the shop.
Mine runs at 19.2 all the time. I have no way to know if it is sending
xoff, but it seems quicker than 9600. It also has amber, ANSI and
80/132 columns. We bought ours for under $600. They have a new model
which may or may not replace the Fame II. Worth a look.
From: dual!ucbvax!decvax!savax!sii!drd (David Dick)
We are using Televideo 955s on our machine. We can get about
1810 chars per second. We aren't sure whether the limitation is
the speed of the terminal or our machine. The terminals
definitely won't run at 38400; cursor positioning needs more time
than the XON-XOFF latency will allow and we don't know what
amount of padding to use. They aren't expensive, we got ours
for a little over dealer cost: ~$550.
From: hplabs!sun!david!david (David DiGiacomo)
The Wyse 50 can't quite manage 19.2 without padding. On a Pyramid (~ 18000
baud throughput) CCA Emacs was able to overrun it quite easily. I finally
had to take insert/delete line out of the termcap. On an 11/750 (~ 14000 baud
throughput) it came pretty close but I still had problems.
I have had more success with the Televideo 924, It still requires an
occasional ^L though. It also has non-embedded attributes. The keyboard is
inferior to the Wyse, but I was able to live with it for a year.
From: hplabs!hao!noao!terak!anasazi!chad (crl)
My company used to manufacture a terminal that was a Data General
Log200 emulator. I wrote a set of firmware that makes it a VT100
emulator. It uses a 6502 for the main processor, and an 8048 in the
keyboard. It has underline, blink, no-display & bold attributes that
may be combined and don't take up screen positions. It has
insert/delete line (but not character) scroll up, scroll down and
cursor addressing. It has a 12" green monitor, a detached keyboard
with 19 function keys (34 with shift) and a seperate numeric keypad
that can also be shifted to send function strings. Basicly, except
for expanded/compressed character sizes, it will do anything a VT100
does, and do it the same way (the termcaps are the same). It will
stay ahead of a 19200 line unless you do some completely illogical
things (like send it a delete 20 lines command 50 times in a row). If
it cannot stay up with the line it will either send an XOFF or drop
DTR (your choice, switch selectable). The hardware handshake is very
useful if you have the wires to your computer, since no software has
to know about it (no timing loops or NULL/DELETE characters sent).
We don't make the terminal any longer, but we have got a few around
here (we use 'em in house--I'm typing on one now). If you don't find
what you are looking for, or want some more info, send me some e-mail
and I'll try to get you some literature. I think we would sell you a
couple (you'd want more than one for spares--support will be harder to
arrange than the sale since we don't make them any more).
From: ihnp4!hounx!bear (Jim)
I have a program that runs well on a AT&T 6300 and handles 19,200.
It should run on most 8Mhz IBM PC Clones. It simulates a HEATHKIT
h19. It screws up on a 5Mhz PC iff the remote transmits many lines
(>48) or many control sequences without a pause.
From: lll-crg!seismo!mnetor!lsuc!dave (Dave Sherman)
I never saw your original query, but you might like to know
that the Esprit Executive 10/102 (a VT-100 lookalike which I
posted a query about to the net the other day) works fine at
19200. I run at 19200 from my office terminal all the time.
From: bdale@winfree.UUCP (Bdale Garbee)
Paul -- Stay away from the Wyse-50. I bought about a half dozen at my former
job, and loved them dearly (especially the keyboards!) until I started running
Emacs on them... then I found out the hitch. The Wyse-50 emulates the
Televideo and similar terminals, and eats a screen location every time it
changes attribute modes on the screen. So, for example, an emacs mode line
done in inverse video will get horribly trashed as time goes on... rewriting
the screen with sort of fix it, but you LOSE a location on the screen (it
shows up as a blank) every time you change from normal to inverse to whatever.
Wyse makes another terminal called the Wyse-75. I've not used one yet (just
moved from Pittsburgh to Colorado Springs and am still getting settled), but
it is supposedly fully VT100 compatible and has the same glorious keyboard as
the 50. Don't have any idea if it will do 19,200... but I ran all the 50's
at that speed. Find a local sales rep who will give you one to demo for a
couple days. And let me know what you think. Sounds like it could be a
winner.
From: John Bartlett <gatech!linus!encore!maxzilla!bartlett>
I have done research into the very question you ask (terminals that can
handle 19200 or 38400). My requirement was for an ANSI terminal for a
large UNIX machine (Encore Multimax). We have an ethernet based
terminal concentrator which is capable of running at 38400, and so we
wanted a fast terminal to take advantage of the speed. Here is the
data:
Terminals 08/13/85
Terminal 9600 baud 19200 baud 38400 baud
Model (960 max) (1920 max) (3840 max)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Wyse 75 957 1860 2650, 3200(7/25/85)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Qume 201(202) 621 616 757 (202)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Ampex 219 946 1730 1860
(jeff 9/17/85) 960 1245 1245
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Visual 220 946 1560 Not avalable
(jeff 9/17/85) 960 1486 1486
--------------------------------------------------------------------
HS100 948 (light) 1890 (light) 2180 (light)
222 (enhanced, about the same at any baud rate...,
--------------------------------------------------------------------
VT100 882 875(lost many) Not available
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Vision-II 960 1004 Not available
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Setup: 8 bits, no parity, Auto xon/xoff, status line off
Program used: /diag/dcn/mon/hsblab - Xmits 10 * 10 * 1024 characters.
The measurement was taken by counting some number of frames going by on
the terminal (it reverses video every 10*10*1024 characters) and
clocking with a stop watch.
The obvious result is that the Wyse terminal beats any other by quite a
margin at 38400. The Wyse still needs to issue XON/XOFF commands at
38400 (it paints the screen between 2600 and 3000 characters/sec, not
3840) but it is by far the fastest.
Early on we had reliability problems with the Wyse, and also had
difficulty getting the system through FCC testing with the Wyse
attached, but both those problems seem to have been fixed by Wyse.
From: lll-crg!ll-xn!s3sun!sdcsvax!jc (John Cornelius)
You might consider either the Microterm Ergo 420 or the C Itoh 224. I've had
no problem at 19.2 with either one, unless you put it into smooth scroll mode
of course, and they are full VT220 emulators. Both have 14" screens and come in
green and amber. Western Scientific handles both terminals if your interested.
I would not expect to pay as much as you imply for them.
From: hplabs!hp-sdd!ncr-sd!ncrcae!sauron!wescott (Mike Wescott)
I'm using both the Wyse 50 and Televideo 955 terminals. To me, the 955 is the
winner. The wide sceen (132 char) is easier to read on the Televideo and the
Wyse 50 keyboards have had serious key-bounce problems. On the otherhand the
televideo has a brain-damaged mode for using magic cookies for screen
attributes. But it works at least as well as the Wyse 50.
From: ihnp4!ho95e!wcs (Bill Stewart)
The fastest terminal I've seen has been an HP 150, used as a terminal
rather than a PC. I did some timings on various terminals,
(time cat /etc/termcap), and got the following results:
HP 150 12000 baud
Teletype 5420 8600 baud (it's been replaced by the AT&T 4425,
which may be somehat faster, but should
be about the same.)
Both of these were driven by a 19200 baud line, with ^S^Q.
Do you REALLY need >>9600 real baud? If your system is empty, it can
probably do it, but if it's busy enough it may not keep up.
I vaguely remember that the Ann Arbor Ambassador is fast.
From: dual!lll-crg!seismo!decuac!c3pe!john (John P. Landahl)
The terminal I am using here at work is hooked into our HP3000 at 19200
baud. It is a Hewlett Packard 2392A terminal, and it will do everything you
want it too, I beleive. It has 8 user-definable (non-volatile) function keys,
some nice configuration menus (instead of dials or dipswitches),
separate cursor and number pads, line modify, block mode, smooth scrool, memory
lock, up to 8 pages of memory (not sure about th maximum), insert line/char,
delete line/char, support for many foreign languages and character sets,
etc, etc, etc. The cost is somewhere aroun $1400. Check into it, it is a very
nice terminal. Sorry, it has a green screen, not amber....
From: bogstad@hopkins-eecs-bravo.arpa (Bill Bogstad)
I have a Wyse-75 terminal which I have used for about 2 years
now. I had it connected to a VAX 750 as the sole user at 19.2K baud and
can't remember having any problems with this configuration. However, I
would still suggest that you try it first.
From: shannon@sun.uucp (Bill Shannon)
The only problem I have with the Wyse-50 is the "FUNCT" key - tear if off and
throw it away, it's in the wrong place!
Also look at the Wyse-30, a cheaper version of the Wyse-50 that may do what
you need.
From: ron@brl-sem.ARPA (Ron Natalie <ron>)
Isn't the Wyse-50 the stupid terminal that screws up if you have the control
key depressed while it is typing? I use a Wyse 75 which works well with
EMACS, but I don't know about it at 19,200 baud. Unfortunately VISUAL
stopped making their best terminal, the VISUAL 200, and now makes a whole
bunch of crud that looks like a cross between a VT100 and a Tektronix.
From: lll-lcc!dual!islenet!richard
We have 4 Wyse 50s here which are all connected with just 3 wires
and hand-shaking is turned off. And they're all running nicely at
38400 baud. Our computer ports are full DMA on output.
The terminals are *very* fast. And without bothering to connect
hand-shaking they have yet to drop a character, no matter what
kind of tricks you pull. Oh, except when you turn on smooth-
scroll, but who uses that anyway.
Nice big readable screens too.
And I wouldn't touch a Televideo thingy of any kind with a 50 foot
pole. Fix or repair daily!