RAMSEY@marshall.ltv.COM ("Gary K. Ramsey") (12/01/87)
From: NAME: Steve Bell FUNC: CIE TEL: 214/266-4969 <BELL_SW AT A1 AT BRUTUS> Gary, Please send out the following message. Thanks, Steve ----------------------------------- In a recent article, John McAllister of Oxford requested information on the Falco 5220e terminal. Following is my evaluation of that terminal. I was charged with evaluating terminals for use by the general engineering population here at LTV. (LTV is a very large (>14000 employees) aerospace subcontractor.) Because of the recent drop in price of terminals with graphics capabilities, we determined that all users should have this capability if it was cheap enough. We looked at several graphics-capable terminals with the intention giving our engineers an alpha terminal that has good enough graphics for quick-look and preview work before sending the pictures to a hardcopy device. We chose the Falco 5220e as the most capable, fastest, and cheapest. The terminals we considered were the Falco 5220e, the Wyse 99GT, and several of the Adds and GraphOn terminals. The Adds and GraphOn were considered too expensive for the benefits derived--their main capabilities were in giving more colors, resolution, functions, etc. than the terminals that they emulate. These capabilities are useless to us because we don't want to have to buy a different device driver for every different implementation of a Tek 4205 (for example). The real contest was between the Falco and the Wyse, which provide both VT220 and Tek 4010/4014 emulation. We picked the Falco because of price (we were quoted $465.00 with the expanded memory which gives better resolution), readability, visual quality, and speed (speed was evaluated by reading the industry rags--they both ran as fast as our terminal servers would send). The Falco also has a more natural user interface, with a ctrl-F6 key to toggle between windows (I set up one VT220, one Tek 4014) and a better setup menu. The Wyse emulated something like 23 terminals, and I had to scroll through all of them to toggle between VT220 and 4014. We make the second computer shop here at LTV that has standardized on the Falco 5220e. The other shop is a beta-test site, so they get a big say in any changes to firmware. Which reminds me, our distributor said to order firmware revision #T711 to get the latest one. Sincerely, Steve Bell LTV Aerospace & Defense Dallas, TX USA Bell@Marshall.ltv.com