murphy@pur-phy (William J. Murphy) (03/16/88)
I was just told today that we ought to look into buying a terminal
for the line into the departmental computers. We used to use a
Regent20 terminal, but since our lab aquired a Zenith 386, I hooked the
serial port to the Unix line and now run kermit 2.29c under the vt102
and Tek4010 emulation modes. You say, "what a waste of a 386." I agree.
but the ZCM-1490 monitor provides no eyestrain, and I love color.
We are primarily running a PC-developed number-crunching simulation
on a University minisupercomputer
and need the use of graphics facilities on it rather than the PC. For
a short term solution we will borrow a VISUAL 550 from another group,
but for a long term we need to replace the Regent 20 with something with
Tektronix 4010/4014 emulation. Now my questions. . .
1. The VISUAL 550 emulates VT52 VT100 and VT300 modes. Will it allow
us to plot graphics to the screen using the UNIX function
graph < datafile | plot -terminal_type? (Don't flame me on this)
2. What advantages do Netlanders see in purchasing an inexpensive PC
clone and running kermit with an EGA monitor versus buying a
terminal with a Tek mode?
3. I have info about the Wyse 99GT terminal. Is it any good? It does
have vt220 and Tek4010/4014 modes, amber screen, PC connectibility,
and a price tag of $550. Has anyone used this both on maniframes &
micros?
4. What are some other terminals which have Tek4010/4014 emulation
vt100+ modes and are resonably priced?
Please e-mail responses to me, I hate to increase the bandwidth of the
Usenet.
William J. Murphy
murphy@newton.physics.purdue.eduHoweird@cup.portal.com (03/18/88)
The PC with a terminal emulator will always be my choice. A terminal has only one advantage-price. Most color terminals are only slightly more portable than a PC. They don't have internal processors or disk drives, so you can't use them on most networks and if you want to save something you read online, you need to print it out NOW. PCs allow you to capture the data and/or spool it to a printer.