henry (06/16/82)
Are there any fairly cheap ($1500 is the right sort of number) terminals that can be downloaded with code from a host CPU? My big interest is downloading the front end of an editor. The ANSI-standard control sequences are too low-level to really exploit the smarts that live in almost all terminals these days, and IBM-style "block mode" is a dead loss (block mode terminals are just too stupid, and the brain-damaged design makes it impossible to fill the gaps with software -- no way can you provide operations that work by word instead of by character or by line, for example). Clearly one cannot depend on a terminal manufacturer to do the right thing, so the terminal has to be downloadable. It also has to have enough resources (mainly, RAM) to make downloading useful. Such creatures don't seem common. I'm aware of BBN's BitGraph, and BTL's Blit, but both are too expensive for the immediate market. (*I* would spend $5000 for one, but when you mention a price five times that of a standard glass teletype, many people simply stop listening.) It doesn't seem to me that adding some RAM and a simple loader would add terribly much to a terminal's price, but I keep watching for such terminals and haven't seen any. Anybody know of any? Respond by mail, please; I'll summarize responses for the net.