MARTYS@WILLIAMS.BITNET.UUCP (06/12/87)
Daniel P. B. Smith inquires: > I was recently surprised to discover if a VT240 is set for "VT100 mode, > VT240 ID," the command > > $ SET TERMINAL/INQUIRE > > will change it to "VT200 mode, 7-bit controls." The analogous thing > happens on a VT220. > > Did it always do this, or is this a VMS 4.5 innovation? Should I > be irritated by this, and, if not, why not? We experienced a similiar problem with VT220's several months ago when using some of the command procedures provided with WPS. We traced it to different versions of the VT220 firmware. For our use of WPS we wanted all terminals to be VT100's, so we used a WPS login command procedure that would do a SET TERM/INQUIRE to determine the mode of the terminal, and then command it to VT100 mode if it was not in VT100 mode. We found that after running the command procedure, some VT220 (not all) terminals were reverting back to VT200 mode even if they were set to VT100 mode before the command procedure executed. It landed up that VT220 firmware version 1.1 would automatically reset the VT220 terminal to a VT200 mode on the reception of the /INQUIRE command, whereas version 2.0 firmware would leave the terminals in their existing mode (VT100), and would not be affected by the /INQUIRE command. The VT220 firmware version is visible in the lower right corner of the "setup" menu. My guess would be that to be on the safe side, its always best to re-program the terminal after a SET TERM/INQUIRE command. A while back in info-vax someone requested a way to flush the type-ahead buffer before doing a keyboard read in DCL. One suggestion was to do a SET TERM/INQUIRE. This problem might cause other problems with that approach. Mike Martys Technical Analyst Williams College Bitnet: MARTYS@WILLIAMS