spear@ihopb.UUCP (10/23/83)
Here is the summary of responses I received concerning my requesting for information on 'cheap' terminals. Lots of good, if contradictory, comments. If anyone's interested, I got a Freedom 100 after considering everything. It had an unbeatable price/performance ratio and works very well with Unix, vi, etc.. Steve Spearman ihnp4!ihopb!spear *Response 1*************************************************** I would have to say I have been totally satisfied with my h19. I put it together and it worked right away. I had one capacitor melt down a couple months after I had it, but replacing it wasn't too much of a problem (and since I had the assembly manual I was able to do it, something I probably wouldn't try on a non-kit). I think the newer h29 is a reasonable replacement, but I haven't used one. *Response 2************************************************** For a cheap terminal, take a look at the Heath/Zenith 29. I've got two of them in my office and find them satisfactory for all of my terminal needs (a BLIT or BitGraph is my next step up). They have all the important features for home (modem) use--hardware tabs, insert/delete line, etc. The Heath is an expecially good deal if you don't mind building a bunch of boards (video, not CPU) and doing some mindless assembly work. Even if you pay someone $100 to build it, you come out ahead. An added bonus is the pile of documentation which comes with the kit. It is tons better than any other terminal manual I've seen. The 29 series has a lot of fixes over the 19 series. Most important is the correction of a screen "glitch" when inserting characters (ie. running vi). Both the 19 and 29 emulate a vt52, so termcaps are easy to find. *Response 3******************************************************* TVI925 I think the keyboard is much too springy *Response 4******************************************************** Well, I like my H19, which I got for $550. It doesn't have super-whiz-bang video attributes (only inverse video, sigh), but if it ever breaks, I can fix it, since I have all the schematics, part numbers, etc.... And it's a reasonably decent thing (ANSI standard) and there're other ROMs available if you don't like H/Z mode or ANSI mode. *Response 5********************************************************* I just got a TeleVideo 910+ terminal for $550 and I like it a lot. Minimum features, but it does have insert/delete line so it works well with "vi". *Response 6********************************************************* Happy to pass along my information on home terminals. I had the excellent "good luck" to obtain a used Heathkit H19 crt for only $450. The last time Heath put out a catalogue, they had it listed as $549 (choice of non-glare green CRT or standard white characters.) If you happen to be near a Heath store, you may get a dealer who discounts them. Don't be afraid to get it just because it is a kit and not already put together. At best, you will get the self-satisfaction of assembling it, and having put together *many* Heathkits, I can assure you their instruction manuals are quite easy to follow. Alternatively, you can probably find someone in the Amateur Radio club who would assemble it for you just for the fun of doing it (I know I would!) It has the full ASCII keyboard, including ESC (for VI Editor), tab, delete, backspace, ctrl, and repeat. Additionally you get 8 function keys for you to define, a numeric keypad, and a few other goodies. When I first got mine, I was accustomed to the very light touch of a Teletype 4424 and it took me an evening to get used to the feel of a different keyboard, but since then I have no complaints. It has internal switches which you can use to define the default characteristics of the terminal (baud rate, parity, full/half duplex) but you can also change them from the keyboard. The manual which comes with it even gives you a troubleshooting guide, circuit description, how to adjust/service it, and all the *many* escape sequences it understands. Each character on the screen is an 8X10 dot matrix so you get very good characters and lots of "graphics" to play with. 24 lines by 80 character screen with a 25th line to do special stuff with. It scrolls automatically so you have no special work to do there. I built my first Heathkit in 1960 and it is still working just fine. This terminal has been in my possession for a year and it hasn't malfunctioned once. But should it do so and I don't feel like fooling with it, I can take it to any Heath store or send it back to the home factory for complete service and refurbishment. So maybe this will give you a hint. I don't mean to imply it to be the "ultimate" terminal, because I would *really* like one with a separate keyboard. But for the money, I really feel it is a great buy. I checked with some of the other local small-computer types and they highly recommended it. *Response 7************************************************** My terminal cost about $2.5K, as I recall. (The folks at work sprang for it.) I have the same one at work. The keyboard stinks: the key action feels like the sliding surface is made of sandpaper, to the point that my fingertips hurt after a heavy day of use. And I use it heavily about every other day; and have for about 12 months. Its called a DEC VT-100. *Response 8***************************************************** The terminal I have is a Microterm Mime I. I spent $625 (qty 10) 4 years ago. Don't buy one - when the h19 came out I kicked myself. However, it's a reasonable terminal. Currently, you have many to choose from. Good reports have been received on the Freedom, Falco, Wyse, Heathkit, and Teletype 5410, all in the $500 range. Avoid anything made by Televideo, Teleray, or Adds. Especially Televideo. The major software problem is the magic cookies left on the screen when you change highlighting modes. Also the keyboard is horrible. ON the 925/950, if you have over 1 page of memory, you can't both use it and use your backspace and tab keys. *Response 9************************************************** My terminal repair person says the Televideos are all OK. Dec is good, as is Viewpoint. Lear Sieglers are hard to fix when they break. Avoid Visuals. He didn't know about Micro-Terms. We're using two ancient Micro-Terms and they're doing OK. washu!eric is fond of the Micro-Term Mime 201s, I think. He'll probably talk me in to buying one soon. *Response 10************************************************** What I like best is I built it. It looks like I'll be getting Micro Term mime 201's at (a user's) suggestion. I saw some of them at washu yesterday and they look nice. Time will Tell. *Response 11**************************************************** I've been using some Freedom-100's and I like them very much; good keyboard feel, good screen resolution, nice software options. I especially like the fact that you can change the default options with some clearly labeled switches on the back. The only problem I've had was when I implemented WordStar I found that they are slow to execute some of their internal functions; clear to end of screen, clear to end of line, and caused problems at 9600 baud. I fixed that by not using the commands, and letting WordStar do it. *Response 12************************************************* I have a Liberty Freedom 100 at home and like it a lot. Pretty smart, no magic cookies, visible bells with vi, bidirectional printer port (which I have yet to use). I paid $700 at a local computer shop so if it got weird, I could truck it back. No problems yet in about 6 months of use. One side-effect - jams TV channels 2, 4, 5 and maybe others. I have not yet found a solution. Very few terminals are FCC Class B devices - certified for home use. Most (such as f100, tvi925, etc) are Class A - commercial use. FCC figures commercial users of RF-noisy computer equipment will be able to take care of problems themselves better. Zenith, Radio Shack, and RCA might have Class B terminals, but I suspect you may give up a lot in functionality. *Response 13***************************************************** Personally, I use an ADDS Viewpoint and I adore it. Main features: Cheap. At the time I bought it (about a year and a half ago) it was the cheapest terminal available. Circa $400, maybe even less. Multiple video attributes. Any combination of Reverse Video, Underline, Blink, and Half Intensity is available. The video attributes do not take up any screen space. Unfortunately, you can have only one attribute on screen at once (for example, you can't have one word underlined and another in reverse video). Very small and light. Detached keyboard. Uses a standard coiled telephone handset cord, easily replaceable. Very light keyboard feel. I can type much faster on it than on virtually any other terminal I've ever used. It's been compared to the difference between a harpsichord and a piano. Numeric keypad. Most of the alphabetic keyboard is well laid out (exceptions below). Misfeatures: Character set is a little weird. The capital V is very strange and it's sometimes hard to tell a ! from a |. Rubout and backspace keys are in STRANGE places. The DEL key is under the left shift and the backspace key is two rows above the RETURN key, four or five keys to the right of the 0. The cursor control keys are the shifted numeric keypad. There are three function keys but they transmit the non-programmable strings "^B1<CR>", "^B2<CR>", and "^B3<CR>". Completely useless. The terminal isn't as smart as others in its price class available today. For example, it lacks the Insert mode which would make vi a lot happier. However, it's more than adequate for WordStar. ****End of Terminal Responses**********************************