sdb@shark.UUCP (Steven Den Beste) (08/13/83)
Once in a while, I update this and post it to "net.micro" because I know there are
people out there like me who are using the Radio Shack Color Computer
to talk to UNIX systems.
This article provides information about the best communications package
available for the Coco - COLORCOM/E. I have also owned and used Radio Shack
VIDTXT and Nelson's SUPER COLORTERM. The latter is a complete waste
of time and money. The former may or may not respond to all of the capabilities
that Eigen Systems put into COLORCOM/E (I haven't tried). This termcap
works equally well for the cartridge or the disk versions of COLORCOM/E.
I have used both and can recomend both without reservation.
They give you full ASCII capability.
COLORCOM/E is available from SPECTRUM PROJECTS, 93-15 86th Drive,
Woodhaven NY, 11421. Cost is $49.95 plus $3 shipping and handling.
(Spectrum projects also sells a lower case mod for about $80 that I
can also recomend without reservation. If you have an "F" or "285"
system, it takes a little work to install. I have done it, so if you
have questions, feel free to ask for help.)
Just in passing, I might add that I have no connection with Eigen
systems or Spectrum Projects except as a customer in both cases. I have
been a customer of both several times and have never been disapointed.
One time I happen to hit ESC followed by "A" and
noticed strange things. Experimentation showed that COLORCOM/E
has a lot of neat commands for screen addressing, which, once figured out,
work for VI. They also work for ROGUE, though the screen size may not work
depending on the version. It works for versions 2.8 and 3.6. It
does not work for version 5.2. I have not tried it for other versions.
(Unfortunately, one problem is that none of this is documented in the
manual that EIGEN SYSTEMS provides with COLORCOM/E.)
I have found the following commands: (Case *DOES* matter for
the character following the ESC)
<ESC>A move up
<ESC>B move down
<ESC>C move right without change
<ESC>D Backspace - This is equivalent to ^H (but there is a bug - see below)
<ESC>G (This is a command, but I don't know what it does.)
It is reputed that there is a command that has a second character
associated with it which allows downloading of binary to memory, and
then execution if desired. I know that it is possible to download full
8-bit values, thus putting low-res pictures on screen. I have been told
that there is ability to put anything anywhere in memory, and to cause
COLORCOM/E to jump to it, optionally. If anyone figures it out, please let me know.
<ESC>H Move to top of screen
<ESC>I (This one is strange, too. It echos "CC1". I think this is
supposed to be an ANSI standard to allow a system to query a terminal
to see what type it is. I suspect that COLORCOM/E returns the same
value as RS VIDTXT does - so that COMPUSERVE will treat them the same.
I don't have a subscription to COMPUSERVE, so I don't know.)
<ESC>J Clear to end of line
<ESC>K Clear to end of screen
<ESC>Yyx This gives complete cursor addressing.
"@" is 0, "A" is 1 and so on.
For 'y' and 'x' (representing Line and Column respectively)
the character represents the coordinate to move
the cursor to. "<ESC>YCE" moves the cursor to line 4, character 6.
<ESC>j Clear screen but don't move cursor.
The complete TERMCAP entry is:
coco|coco|TRS80 Color computer with COLORCOM/E:co#32:li#16:am:cd=\EK:ce=\EJ\
:cl=\Ej\EH:cm=\EY%+@%+@:nd=\EC:up=\EA:ho=\EH:xn:kd=^J\
:kl=^H:kr=^I:ku=\^:
There is a bug in how backspace works - You cannot
backspace over the place where any control character happened,
whether it left something on the screen or not. In particular
this includes BEL and ESC (sigh)
which means that neither BS nor <ESC>D can backspace over any
location gotten to by an <ESC>C
or a BEL.
As a result of this, I have neither included a "bs" nor a "bc" entry in this
termcap. This forces VI to use cursor addressing to do a backspace.
If the "bs" entry were there, VI would echo a BS, and COLORCOM/E would
ignore it. It is also the case that VI seems to have a bug in how
it handles terminals with extremely small screens. If you are doing
inserting that ends up at the bottom of the screen, any line you type that laps
over a screen line will have the first character on the second and
subsequent lines blank - until you hit CR, at which time they appear.
They are really there, they just don't appear. I don't know whether
this is really a bug with COLORCOM/E or with VI, though I think it is VI's fault.
There are other strangenesses that happen, so if you are in doubt as
to whether something is as you see it, hit Control-L to make sure.
I would like to take this opportunity to ask that anyone
else that owns a TRS Color Computer please send me mail.
Please tell me your system configuration, and any other
interesting gossip, as well.
Does anyone know what a COLOR2 is yet? Has anyone seen OS9 yet?
Steve Den Beste
Tektronix
(ucbvax|decvax)!teklabs!tekecs!shark!sdb