Best dumb terminal for serial connections

[Jason Evans]

Hi all,

I'm going to be moving soon and after I get settled in, I would like to find an
dumb terminal that I can use with a serial connection to a raspberry pi. I'd
like any suggestions you might have for such a machine.

The only thing that I ask is that it has a serial port that doesn't require a
lot of modifications to get going, isn't too rare and therefore expensive, and
I am partial to amber screens instead of green screens.

Like I said, I'm not looking to buy anything yet but if you have any
suggestions on what to keep an eye out for, please let me know.

Jason

[Scott Lurndal]

Lear-Siegler ADM-3A.

[Peter Flass]

My experience is old, but most dumb terminals were pretty good toward the
end of their run. I liked the VT-220, but the IBM 3101 an HP terminals.
were OK. There should be lots of those around.

--
Pete

[Peter Flass]

That too.

--
Pete

[Jason Evans]

Scott Lurndal wrote:

> Lear-Siegler ADM-3A.

I saw one of those on YouTube and they looked really neat and almost exactly
what I would like to have. I'll just need to find one that isn't rediculously
expensive.

[Jason Evans]

Jason Evans wrote:

If it doesn't put out too much RF interference, a Heathkit terminal might be
nice. Put it next to a HW-101 for logging.

https://i.redd.it/hjoj2wxtcfh21.png

[Dan Espen]

xterm! rxvt! putty!

Can't imagine actually wanting a tube CRT in my house.

--
Dan Espen

[Scott Lurndal]

While emulators are nice (I wrote one for the Unisys T27),
I really enjoy using the real thing sometimes (I have two).

[Dan Espen]

For very small values of enjoy I suppose.

I'm using a 27 inch flat panel with 5K resolution.

Now, that's a "real thing" I can get behind.

--
Dan Espen

[Scott Lurndal]

I've a pair of 27" 1920x1200 color calibrated
flat panels in front on an articulated stand
and a 4k 32" to the right.

But when I'm running the burroughs emulator, using the real
T27 lends verisimilitude to the emulation.

[J. Clarke]

I believe I've got a couple of new in box ASCII terminals of some sort
or other in the attic. Many decades ago Tech Data sent them to me by
mistake and didn't want them back and I never had a use for them. If
you're interested I'll see if I can dig them out and get the details.
If you're not in North America though the shipping may be more than
they're worth. That assumes of course that the squirrels haven't been
at them.

[Joe Pfeiffer]

New serial terminals are, as far as I know, extinct. My favorite
terminals back in the stone age were the DEC VT-220 and the Zenith Z19
(also available as a kit from Heathkit as the H19). I actually have a
Z19 in my collection (no, I'm not selling it).

On those rare occasions I've needed a serial terminal in the last couple
of decades, I've used minicom on a Linux laptop.

I have no experience with the Pi, but I do with other similar boards.
Every single one has had a perfectly acceptable ssh server I've been
able to access over my home network easily right out of the box.
Several (all? Don't know enough to claim this but it wouldn't surprise
me) Pis have HDMI outputs and can talk to USB keyboards, also out of the
box. So I'm not quite sure why you want to talk to one over a serial
port.

[Dan Espen]

It's clearly a quest for low resolution.

I haven't ordered my first PI yet but I've been studying.
Some have bluetooth and wifi. Lots of ways to ssh
into one of them or connect a keyboard.

I assume this whole thing is for the nostalgia value. Whatever that is.

A few years back I converted over 500 vinyl albums to flac files.
So, I have 500 albums with all that artwork on the covers.
The records themselves were not in good condition.
I trashed them. Can you imagine how much nostalgia got wrecked?

Not a problem, I can press one key and listen to any record I ever had.
Right now, Dion and the Belmonts, Where or when.

If I was so inclined I could convince my music player to show me the
album cover. In 5K.


--
Dan Espen

[Charlie Gibbs]

"24x80 ought to be enough for anyone."

I still have a couple of H19s myself...

> I haven't ordered my first PI yet but I've been studying.
> Some have bluetooth and wifi. Lots of ways to ssh
> into one of them or connect a keyboard.
>
> I assume this whole thing is for the nostalgia value. Whatever that is.
>
> A few years back I converted over 500 vinyl albums to flac files.
> So, I have 500 albums with all that artwork on the covers.
> The records themselves were not in good condition.
> I trashed them. Can you imagine how much nostalgia got wrecked?
>
> Not a problem, I can press one key and listen to any record I ever had.
> Right now, Dion and the Belmonts, Where or when.
>
> If I was so inclined I could convince my music player to show me the
> album cover. In 5K.

That reminds me, I have to find a scanner that does 12x12,
for the really obscure albums - or the ones with lots of inserts
(e.g. Guess Who's _Artificial Paradise_).

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship.
\ / <cgi...@kltpzyxm.invalid> | Apple is a cult.
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.

[J. Clarke]

On Tue, 17 May 2022 18:43:22 -0400, Dan Espen <dan1...@gmail.com>
wrote:

Pis are fun. I have one that I normally access through RDP. But it
displays fine on a 4K TV. And one time just for the heck of it I got
Z/OS running on it. Was ungodly slow, not even good enough to play
with, but it booted and ran and I could log into it.

[Chris Adams]

Once upon a time, Jason Evans <jse...@mailfence.com> said:
>I'm going to be moving soon and after I get settled in, I would like to find an
>dumb terminal that I can use with a serial connection to a raspberry pi. I'd
>like any suggestions you might have for such a machine.

Note that the Pi serial port is not going to work directly on a classic
terminal. The Pi signalling is not RS-232 (typically +12/-12V IIRC) but
3.3V/0V. Sending more than 3.3V into a Pi serial pin will fry it.

There are pre-made Pi-to-USB serial adapters for connecting to a PC, but
I don't know if there are pre-made Pi-to-read-RS-232 adapters.

--
Chris Adams <cma...@cmadams.net>

[Dan Espen]

Charlie Gibbs <cgi...@kltpzyxm.invalid> writes:

> That reminds me, I have to find a scanner that does 12x12, for the
> really obscure albums - or the ones with lots of inserts (e.g. Guess
> Who's _Artificial Paradise_).

For a while, during my vinyl conversion, I'd also cut a CD with the
album content. Of course I had to create a CD label too. One of the
easiest images to obtain is the album cover.

--
Dan Espen

[Dan Espen]

J. Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> writes:

> Pis are fun. I have one that I normally access through RDP. But it
> displays fine on a 4K TV. And one time just for the heck of it I got
> Z/OS running on it. Was ungodly slow, not even good enough to play
> with, but it booted and ran and I could log into it.

I suspect z/VSE would have been a lot better.

--
Dan Espen

[Charlie Gibbs]

Agreed, and I snaffle them myself from various places. What isn't so
easy to find are all the extras that are sometimes included, such as
in _Artificial Paradise_. The original album came packaged like one
of those Publishers' Clearing House offers, with so much stuff that
I didn't play the album that often for the simple reason that it took
so long to get at it. I challenge you to find all that stuff on the
'net. (That's why I want a 12x12 scanner.)

[maus]

On 2022-05-17, J Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 17 May 2022 12:57:02 +0200, Jason Evans
><jse...@mailfence.com> wrote:
>
>>Hi all,
>>

> or other in the attic. Many decades ago Tech Data sent them to me by
> mistake and didn't want them back and I never had a use for them. If
> you're interested I'll see if I can dig them out and get the details.
> If you're not in North America though the shipping may be more than
> they're worth. That assumes of course that the squirrels haven't been
> at them.

I have a sudden vision of Squirrels tapping away at dumb terminals, and
wondering why they were getting no reply. Thanks for that.

NO CARRIER


--
grey...@mail.com
Human Life will not end with a `Bang', but with a `D'oh'
Romantic Ireland is done and gone, it's with O'Leary in the grave.

[Jason Evans]

On Tue, 17 May 2022 10:47:20 -0400, Dan Espen wrote:


> Can't imagine actually wanting a tube CRT in my house.

One of the current hot nerd topics is the idea of putting together retro-
futuristic cyberdeck devices as secondary or project devices. Cyberdecks
are machines with tiny lcd screens with nearly full sized keyboards.

I got the idea that I would like to so something similar in the same
vein. Much of my day to day work life is in the the terminal so I thought
how about using an old machine (dumb terminal) to do real day to day
work. A raspberry pi zero-w could easily be placed into an dumb terminal
and connected directly by serial and still have access to bluetooth and
wifi. I would just need to wire up the serial connection and 5v for power
for the pi. Any work that requires more computational power than the pi
can provide is just an ssh command away.

Is it a stupid idea? Probably. However, it would be a cool piece for a
man cave and it could possibly keep one more piece of equipment out of
the landfill.

BTW, my main work setup is also 2x 27" monitors. Those are nice for my
graphical needs, so I'm not completely against anything modern.

Jason

[Chris Adams]

Once upon a time, Joe Pfeiffer <pfei...@cs.nmsu.edu> said:
>New serial terminals are, as far as I know, extinct. My favorite
>terminals back in the stone age were the DEC VT-220 and the Zenith Z19
>(also available as a kit from Heathkit as the H19). I actually have a
>Z19 in my collection (no, I'm not selling it).

I have a C. Itoh 101 (rebadged on the front by Intergraph) in great
condition collecting dust. I really have no use for it, or the Sun and
Alpha servers its sitting on. I don't know if I could find somebody
local interested in any of this, but I can't imagine paying to ship it.
Sooner or later, it'll all go to the recycler.

--
Chris Adams <cma...@cmadams.net>

[Magnus Olsson]

Well, it's a matter of personal preferences, of course, but I can think of two reasons (apart from the one the OP wrote about downthread, that of making new hardware that's deliberately retro, a bit like those "steampunk" interfaces that look like they were made in 1890):

1. The joy of keeping a "living museum piece" up and running, similar to the joy of having a vintage car in your garage and taking it out for a spin every now and then, even if you don't use it for your everyday travel.

2. Nostalgia value, if you first cut your teeth on that kind of equipment.

Personally, I can see the appeal in all these reasons but CRTs have a rather large footprint and I don't really have the desk space for one.

[Scott Lurndal]

Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> writes:

>On Wed, 18 May 2022 00:09:54 -0000 (UTC), Chris Adams wrote:
>>
>> Note that the Pi serial port is not going to work directly on a classic
>> terminal. The Pi signalling is not RS-232 (typically +12/-12V IIRC) but
>> 3.3V/0V. Sending more than 3.3V into a Pi serial pin will fry it.
>>
>> There are pre-made Pi-to-USB serial adapters for connecting to a PC, but
>> I don't know if there are pre-made Pi-to-read-RS-232 adapters.
>

>Curious, somebody threw out a 2011 LED TV. One jack on the backside is
>labeled RS-232. What would you do with that on a TV?

1 - Access for repair, diagnostics and service updates.
2 - Access for high-end AV control systems (Yamaha has
RS-232 ports on their receivers for that purpose).

[Quadibloc]

On Wednesday, May 18, 2022 at 7:49:35 AM UTC-6, Magnus Olsson wrote:

> Personally, I can see the appeal in all these reasons but CRTs have a rather large footprint and I don't really have the desk space for one.

What with the implosion hazard, high voltages, and X-rays, if one has small children or pets, I
can certainly see someone deciding to resist the pull of nostalgia.

Plus, with the passage of time, such items are now expensive antiques instead of cheap
junk.

John Savard

[Dan Espen]

Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> writes:

> On Wednesday, May 18, 2022 at 7:49:35 AM UTC-6, Magnus Olsson wrote:
>
>> Personally, I can see the appeal in all these reasons but CRTs have a rather large footprint and I don't really have the desk space for one.
>
> What with the implosion hazard,

When I was a kid, the property I lived on was frequently a dump site.
There were lots of TVs dumped there. We'd heard that word, "implosion",
sounds a lot like "explosion" doesn't it?

Well, we broke lots of TV tubes, rocks, steel shafts, anything we could
find. Never got any satisfaction out of it. The tubes just break.

--
Dan Espen

[Joe Pfeiffer]

When the computer center on campus was disposing of a bunch of CRT
terminals some friends of mine and I went out to the local shooting
range and used them for target practice. Same (lack of exciting)
results you saw. A paint can full of water is a lot more fun.

[Charlie Gibbs]

On 2022-05-18, maus <ma...@dmaus.org> wrote:

> On 2022-05-17, J Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 17 May 2022 12:57:02 +0200, Jason Evans
>> <jse...@mailfence.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>
>> or other in the attic. Many decades ago Tech Data sent them to me by
>> mistake and didn't want them back and I never had a use for them. If
>> you're interested I'll see if I can dig them out and get the details.
>> If you're not in North America though the shipping may be more than
>> they're worth. That assumes of course that the squirrels haven't been
>> at them.
>
> I have a sudden vision of Squirrels tapping away at dumb terminals, and
> wondering why they were getting no reply. Thanks for that.
>
> NO CARRIER

You need a small dog to go after the squirrels - hopefully ones that
won't chew on the cables themselves.

No! Sparky! Get away from that power co

NO TERRIER

[Dan Espen]

We tried to break the screen with target arrows. A few good shots could
crack it. This was in the Bronx. Firing a gun would draw too much attention.

So, it's the "implosion myth".

--
Dan Espen

[Peter Flass]

Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
> On Wednesday, May 18, 2022 at 7:49:35 AM UTC-6, Magnus Olsson wrote:
>
>> Personally, I can see the appeal in all these reasons but CRTs have a
>> rather large footprint and I don't really have the desk space for one.
>
> What with the implosion hazard, high voltages, and X-rays, if one has
> small children or pets, I
> can certainly see someone deciding to resist the pull of nostalgia.

IME you really have to work at it to get one to implode. The desk space
issue is probably a bigger problem.

>
> Plus, with the passage of time, such items are now expensive antiques instead of cheap
> junk.
>
> John Savard
>

--
Pete

[Dennis Boone]

> When the computer center on campus was disposing of a bunch of CRT
> terminals some friends of mine and I went out to the local shooting
> range and used them for target practice. Same (lack of exciting)
> results you saw. A paint can full of water is a lot more fun.

You need old Toughbooks to shoot. A rifle round has enough power to get
the magnesium to flare as it goes through. (A 9mm handgun doesn't have
enough power to _get_ through.)

De

[Johnny Billquist]

I use a VT525 with an LCD screen. Real terminal, nice screen. Can't beat
that. :-)

Johnny

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2022-05-17 12:57, Jason Evans wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I'm going to be moving soon and after I get settled in, I would like to find an
> dumb terminal that I can use with a serial connection to a raspberry pi. I'd
> like any suggestions you might have for such a machine.
>
> The only thing that I ask is that it has a serial port that doesn't require a
> lot of modifications to get going, isn't too rare and therefore expensive, and
> I am partial to amber screens instead of green screens.
>
> Like I said, I'm not looking to buy anything yet but if you have any
> suggestions on what to keep an eye out for, please let me know.

A little unclear what "best" means. But anyway, there are plenty of
semi-modern used terminals available.
Looking at ebay for VT terminals turns up plenty. But the prices vary a
lot, with the majority looking to be about the $500 range, but there are
some that are cheaper.

I'm sure if you search around, you find more places. And I've not tried
looking for any other terminal models either. I like the DEC VT
series... :-)

Johnny

[Chris Adams]

Once upon a time, Jason Evans <jse...@mailfence.com> said:

>I'm going to be moving soon and after I get settled in, I would like to find an
>dumb terminal that I can use with a serial connection to a raspberry pi. I'd
>like any suggestions you might have for such a machine.

One additional thought: using a traditional hardware terminal for
something modern like a Pi could be problematic - newer stuff like that
pretty much assumes full ANSI plus Unicode. ANSI is (more or less) a
superset of VT102/VT220, so most escape sequences will work on a classic
terminal, but Unicode definitely won't.

--
Chris Adams <cma...@cmadams.net>

[songbird]

Andreas Kohlbach wrote:
...
> A father of a friend owned a shop selling TV and radio equipment. In the
> garden behind the shop were dead TV. We smashed some screens with a
> hammer. I can confirm they did not implode.

i was sitting right next to an old B&W TV when the screen
broke. no idea why, i hadn't even touched it. it didn't
implode or explode - more like a cracking noise and then it
sorta crumbled. considering i haven't thought of this in
some 40-50yrs i'm surprised at how much of it i remember.


songbird

[Chris Adams]

Once upon a time, songbird <song...@anthive.com> said:
> i was sitting right next to an old B&W TV when the screen
>broke. no idea why, i hadn't even touched it. it didn't
>implode or explode - more like a cracking noise and then it
>sorta crumbled. considering i haven't thought of this in
>some 40-50yrs i'm surprised at how much of it i remember.

When I was like 3 years old, my sister was sitting across the room while
I was eating cereal. She did something that annoyed me, so I chucked my
cereal bowl at her (given where she said I was sitting and how far and
accurate my throw went, my parents should have signed me up for Little
League ASAP).

She ducked, and instead of hitting her, the bowl hit the big old console
TV she was sitting in front of. The bowl broke of course, but it did
crack the screen, just off center. For some years after, it looked like
there was a fly on the screen, or news announcers had something stuck in
their teeth.

No implosion though.

--
Chris Adams <cma...@cmadams.net>

[chris]

On 05/17/22 11:57, Jason Evans wrote:
> Hi all,
>

> I'm going to be moving soon and after I get settled in, I would like to find an
> dumb terminal that I can use with a serial connection to a raspberry pi. I'd
> like any suggestions you might have for such a machine.
>

> The only thing that I ask is that it has a serial port that doesn't require a
> lot of modifications to get going, isn't too rare and therefore expensive, and
> I am partial to amber screens instead of green screens.
>
> Like I said, I'm not looking to buy anything yet but if you have any
> suggestions on what to keep an eye out for, please let me know.
>

> Jason

If you must have a real terminal, then a dec vt100 vt220 or up
would guarantee it would work with any vt100 compatable system.

Use minicom under FreeBSD or Linux here most of the time. Not
perfect, but gets the job done...

Chris

[chris]

Lucky man :-)...

[Ahem A Rivet's Shot]

ISTM that a Raspberry Pi, good keyboard, LCD monitor and
USB<->RS232 dongle could make a very nice terminal - just a SMOP.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

[Lawrence Statton (NK1G)]

Easibus peasibus ... set your locale to iso-8859-1 ... That is
almost-exactly the Digital Extended Character set. If there's glitches
it's going to be in something like the ij character.

[Vir Campestris]

On 18/05/2022 14:49, Magnus Olsson wrote:
> 2. Nostalgia value, if you first cut your teeth on that kind of equipment.

This.

I have an ICL branded Kokusai terminal on the shelf behind me, and I
need to get around to repairing the PSU on the computer it belongs to.

When I do I know it will power up with the time and date set to the time
and date of my eldest son's birth as the RTC battery is long dead.

My son is pushing 40...

Andy

[Peter Flass]

It would be a fun project to read a datastream including Unicode characters
and convert the character data to a bitmap to be written to the screen.

--
Pete

[chris]

On 05/19/22 20:19, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
> On Thu, 19 May 2022 19:55:40 +0100
> chris<chris-...@tridac.net> wrote:
>
>> On 05/19/22 10:56, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>
>>> I use a VT525 with an LCD screen. Real terminal, nice screen. Can't beat
>>> that. :-)
>>>
>>> Johnny
>>
>> Lucky man :-)...
>
> ISTM that a Raspberry Pi, good keyboard, LCD monitor and
> USB<->RS232 dongle could make a very nice terminal - just a SMOP.
>

Right, and there is a packaged pi with inbuilt keyboard available
now. Not too expensive either and could be tempted. Rpi comes of
age, sort of...

Chris

[Lawrence Statton (NK1G)]

It's not at all hard, just tedious. First you convert the UTF-8 stream
(since virtually all Unicode text streams use it) into a sequence of
unicode code-points. The trickiest part is dealing with composite
forms. And just the volume - there are currently about 145,000 defined
code-points, and folks are adding more every edition.

[Rick C]

On Tuesday, May 17, 2022 at 6:57:16 AM UTC-4, Jason Evans wrote:
> Hi all,
>

> I'm going to be moving soon and after I get settled in, I would like to find an
> dumb terminal that I can use with a serial connection to a raspberry pi. I'd
> like any suggestions you might have for such a machine.
>

> The only thing that I ask is that it has a serial port that doesn't require a
> lot of modifications to get going, isn't too rare and therefore expensive, and
> I am partial to amber screens instead of green screens.
>
> Like I said, I'm not looking to buy anything yet but if you have any
> suggestions on what to keep an eye out for, please let me know.

If I needed a serial terminal to manage an rPi, I think I would use another rPi. Isn't that a good solution?

There is a reason why terminals don't exist much anymore.

[Daiyu Hurst]

On Tuesday, May 17, 2022 at 6:57:16 AM UTC-4, Jason Evans wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I'm going to be moving soon and after I get settled in, I would like to find an
> dumb terminal that I can use with a serial connection to a raspberry pi. I'd
> like any suggestions you might have for such a machine.

My favorite remains the Wyse 50 with an amber phosphor tube. The green phosphor models can be
found, but not the amber. I curse myself for leaving mine behind.

But you have to disable the "Function" key in the lower left of the keyboard (X-Acto). If not,
you will curse every time you press it by mistake.

-Dai

[Ahem A Rivet's Shot]

On Sun, 29 May 2022 10:29:16 -0700 (PDT)
Daiyu Hurst <daiyu...@gmail.com> wrote:

> My favorite remains the Wyse 50 with an amber phosphor tube. The green
> phosphor models can be found, but not the amber. I curse myself for
> leaving mine behind.

Have you ever tried to reproduce that amber on a colour monitor ?
I've never been able to get it right, I'm not convinced it's possible.

[Dennis Boone]

> But you have to disable the "Function" key in the lower left of the
> keyboard (X-Acto). If not, you will curse every time you press it by
> mistake.

We used to put a paper clip through the stem of one of the keys on the
tvi925 for similar reasons. I think it may have been the Print key.
We figured that was a reversible hack.

De

[Kurt Weiske]

To: Ahem A Rivet's Shot
-=> Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote to alt.folklore.computers <=-

> My favorite remains the Wyse 50 with an amber phosphor tube. The green
> phosphor models can be found, but not the amber. I curse myself for
> leaving mine behind.

AAS> Have you ever tried to reproduce that amber on a colour
AAS> monitor ? I've never been able to get it right, I'm not convinced it's
AAS> possible.


Oh, thanks all for the memories. My first job was on a Microdata 9000 Pick
system, with Televideo and Wyse 50/60 terminals.

When it came to the Phosphor Wars of the '80s, I was in both camps.
Green/Hercules graphics on PCs, Amber on terminals.

kurt weiske | kweiske at realitycheckbbs dot org
| http://realitycheckbbs.org
| 1:218/700@fidonet


... Overtly resist change
--- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
--- Synchronet 3.19c-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
* realitycheckBBS - Aptos, CA - telnet://realitycheckbbs.org

[Ahem A Rivet's Shot]

On Mon, 30 May 2022 08:14:00 -0700
"Kurt Weiske" <kurt....@realitycheckbbs.org.remove-11c1-this> wrote:

> To: Ahem A Rivet's Shot
> -=> Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote to alt.folklore.computers <=-
>
> > My favorite remains the Wyse 50 with an amber phosphor tube. The green
> > phosphor models can be found, but not the amber. I curse myself for
> > leaving mine behind.
>
> AAS> Have you ever tried to reproduce that amber on a colour
> AAS> monitor ? I've never been able to get it right, I'm not convinced

> AAS> it's possible.

>
>
> Oh, thanks all for the memories. My first job was on a Microdata 9000
> Pick system, with Televideo and Wyse 50/60 terminals.

Must have been about the same time I was using Televideo and Wyse
50 terminals on a Televideo MMMOST setup (hybrid MP/M CP/M with RS422
based star network).

I missed out on encountering Pick, it looked like an interesting
system.

> When it came to the Phosphor Wars of the '80s, I was in both camps.
> Green/Hercules graphics on PCs, Amber on terminals.

There was a cyan phosphor that was really nice but *very* rare I
think, at least I only saw it in one place (on *every* terminal), I don't
recall the make of terminal.

[Lawrence Statton (NK1G)]

Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste...@eircom.net> writes:
> There was a cyan phosphor that was really nice but *very* rare I
> think, at least I only saw it in one place (on *every* terminal), I don't
> recall the make of terminal.

A Friend-of-a-friend worked in an industry that required him to have a
close working relationship with CRT manufacturers. He was able to
finagle a common 12-inch monochrome CRT with the 'blue from RGB'
phosphor. I do not know if this was a catalog item for the manufacturer
in question (I *seem* to recall Ball Bros, but that's a very fuzzy
memory), or he was able to get them to make a one-off. The former seems
more likely, but the latter is certainly not impossible.

[Scott Lurndal]

The LSI ADM-3A was available with a white phospher that had a blueish tint.

Ball Bros supplied their CRTs

[Lawrence Statton (NK1G)]

I had *MANY* different ball monitors over the years, and I am fairly
certain that the ten-pin keyed-edge-connector interface was their
devising that took hold in other vendors'.

The CRT I'm referring to above was not a "blueish tint white" -- It was
brilliant blue.

[Vir Campestris]

Blue on its own is a really bad choice.

You know how human eyes are basically really rubbish? Very limited field
of view with any detail, poor colour detection, etc?

One of the "features" is that there are fewer blue sensors than the red,
green or grey. Which means we can't resolve blue so easily.

Andy

[Scott Lurndal]

Back when I was designing theatrical lighting for shows, one of the first
things I was taught when working with the set/costume designers on the lighting
color schemes was to avoid pure blue scenes for the reasons you state
(even though they can be evocative for storm scenes).

The rule of thumb was to light one side warm and one side cool when
using the traditional area lighting plan.

I wish modern cinematographers would have learned that lesson about
avoiding blues - so many films/TV today are way too dark for old eyes :-)

[Charlie Gibbs]

Try blue - it's the new red!
-- Wall-E

I'm tired of this blue fad, and wish we could move on - especially from
our obsession with bright blue LEDs.

Even back in my teens, before those newfangled LEDs were invented,
my eyes couldn't focus on blue (e.g. Christmas lights) - even some
green lights gave them trouble.

Speaking of theatre, one time I was doing sound in a darkened
auditorium, and the blue LED pilot light on the sound board
was so bright that I had to cover it with three layers of
masking tape before I could see anything else.

Who comes up with this stuff?

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship.
\ / <cgi...@kltpzyxm.invalid> | Apple is a cult.
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.

[Mike Spencer]

Charlie Gibbs <cgi...@kltpzyxm.invalid> writes:

> Try blue - it's the new red!
> -- Wall-E

()()()()()()


--
Mike Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada

[Kerr-Mudd, John]

On Tue, 31 May 2022 21:30:14 GMT
sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) wrote:

> Vir Campestris <vir.cam...@invalid.invalid> writes:

[]

> >One of the "features" is that there are fewer blue sensors than the red,
> >green or grey. Which means we can't resolve blue so easily.
>
> Back when I was designing theatrical lighting for shows, one of the first
> things I was taught when working with the set/costume designers on the lighting
> color schemes was to avoid pure blue scenes for the reasons you state
> (even though they can be evocative for storm scenes).
>
> The rule of thumb was to light one side warm and one side cool when
> using the traditional area lighting plan.
>
> I wish modern cinematographers would have learned that lesson about
> avoiding blues - so many films/TV today are way too dark for old eyes :-)

Orange & Teal - urgh.

--
Bah, and indeed Humbug.

[D.J.]

Most likely by people who don't have to use it.
--
Jim

[Lawrence Statton (NK1G)]

Vir Campestris <vir.cam...@invalid.invalid> writes:
> Blue on its own is a really bad choice.

De gustibus non est disputandum.

I probably would not have chosen it for serious work, but it was not my
decision to make.

[John Goerzen]

On 2022-05-17, Jason Evans <jse...@mailfence.com> wrote:
> I'm going to be moving soon and after I get settled in, I would like to find an
> dumb terminal that I can use with a serial connection to a raspberry pi. I'd
> like any suggestions you might have for such a machine.

I'm fond of the DEC vt510. Unlike many dumb terminals, it accepts a standard PC
PS/2 keyboard and also supports key remapping, so you can finally get Ctrl where
it should be - left of A.

The downside is that it uses DTR/DTS instead of CTR/CTS for hardware flow
control, which isn't supported on Linux. So, you can either wire your own
serial cable or use software flow control. Somewhat to my surprise, I've found
that these old dumb terminals can't keep up with line rate very well. I run my
vt510 at 57600bps but definitely need the flow control for things with heavy
escape sequences.

- John

[John Goerzen]

On 2022-05-19, Chris Adams <cma...@cmadams.net> wrote:
> One additional thought: using a traditional hardware terminal for
> something modern like a Pi could be problematic - newer stuff like that
> pretty much assumes full ANSI plus Unicode. ANSI is (more or less) a
> superset of VT102/VT220, so most escape sequences will work on a classic
> terminal, but Unicode definitely won't.

GNU screen can do this kind of conversion. I use it with my vt510 and it works
perfectly. My .screenrc:

defflow on
defencoding UTF-8
vbell off
termcapinfo * XC=B%,‐-,

# From https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/8439/gnu-screen-makes-vim-esc-key-slow
# Could also try maptimeout 0
maptimeout 5

# https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4548106/screen-somehow-unmaps-my-arrow-keys-in-emacs-after-a-z
# to try to resolve arrow key issues in less and others
bindkey -k ku stuff ^[OA
bindkey -k kd stuff ^[OB
bindkey -k kr stuff ^[OC
bindkey -k kl stuff ^[OD

[Kurt Weiske]

To: Ahem A Rivet's Shot
-=> Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote to alt.folklore.computers <=-

AAS> Must have been about the same time I was using Televideo and
AAS> Wyse 50 terminals on a Televideo MMMOST setup (hybrid MP/M CP/M with
AAS> RS422 based star network).

AAS> I missed out on encountering Pick, it looked like an
AAS> interesting system.

It was - the file system was a data dictionary, and access was through a
version of BASIC or a relational DB language called REALITY that was pretty
close to structured SQL.

That was a fun gig - working at a university bookstore, writing full-screen
inventory query tools, a rudimentary email system, a chat system and
tweaking all sorts of "glue" apps to connect the POS system with accounting
and inventory, writing systems to translate book orders into EDI format, and
more - all in BASIC and SQL as a 22 year-old student.

kurt weiske | kweiske at realitycheckbbs dot org
| http://realitycheckbbs.org
| 1:218/700@fidonet

... Make a blank valuable by putting it in an exquisite frame

[Chris Hanson]

For a generic terminal to use with pretty much anything, it's hard to go
wrong with an HP 700/96 or 700/98. They have great DEC emulation, full
HP blockmode/forms support (required if you ever want to connect it to
an ancient HP system running a non-UNIX operating system), and unlike
DEC terminals—which are all seen as "desirable"—the "modern" HP
terminals are on the inexpensive side.

The downside is that, unlike the very last models of DEC terminal
(VT510/VT520/VT525), they still use a custom keyboard, but there are
both PC-101 and HP-ITF layouts and the keyboards aren't that "desirable"
so, again, they tend to be inexpensive. And personally I like the HP-ITF
layout if I ever need to use vi since the escape key is in a pretty
convenient place.

The more important thing is to set up a decent RS-232 port on the
Raspberry Pi (or whatever else you use it with). Three-wire serial
(transmit/receive/ground) will work just fine with XON/XOFF in-band flow
control as long as you adjust the levels between TTL and RS-232, such as
with an MC1488/MC1489 pair or something like that, but to really fly
you'll want full hardware flow control at proper RS-232 voltage levels.
(The latter is something I've heard some USB-serial adapters fail at.)
This guide has a lot of good and detailed information:
<http://www.deater.net/weave/vmwprod/hardware/pi-rts/>

-- Chris

[Charles Richmond]

On 5/31/2022 5:15 PM, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> On 2022-05-31, Scott Lurndal <sc...@slp53.sl.home> wrote:
>
>

]... snip ...] ]... snip ...] ]... snip ...]

>
> Speaking of theatre, one time I was doing sound in a darkened
> auditorium, and the blue LED pilot light on the sound board
> was so bright that I had to cover it with three layers of
> masking tape before I could see anything else.
>
> Who comes up with this stuff?
>

"I used to criticize bad decisions... until I realized that someone was
making money from doing it this way."

-- Paraphrased from Charlie Gibbs

--

Charles Richmond

--
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus

[Mike Spencer]

Charles Richmond <code...@aquaporin4.com> writes:

> On 5/31/2022 5:15 PM, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>
>> On 2022-05-31, Scott Lurndal <sc...@slp53.sl.home> wrote:
>>
>>
> ]... snip ...] ]... snip ...] ]... snip ...]
>>
>> Speaking of theatre, one time I was doing sound in a darkened
>> auditorium, and the blue LED pilot light on the sound board
>> was so bright that I had to cover it with three layers of
>> masking tape before I could see anything else.
>>
>> Who comes up with this stuff?
>
> "I used to criticize bad decisions... until I realized that someone was
> making money from doing it this way."
>
> -- Paraphrased from Charlie Gibbs

You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale,
and I won't have it! Is that clear?....There are no
nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are
no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is
only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane,
interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion
of dollars.
-- Arthur Jensen, in _Network_

[Jan van den Broek]

Tue, 17 May 2022 12:57:02 +0200
Jason Evans <jse...@mailfence.com> schrieb:
>Hi all,

>
>I'm going to be moving soon and after I get settled in, I would like to find an
>dumb terminal that I can use with a serial connection to a raspberry pi. I'd
>like any suggestions you might have for such a machine.
>

>The only thing that I ask is that it has a serial port that doesn't require a
>lot of modifications to get going, isn't too rare and therefore expensive, and
>I am partial to amber screens instead of green screens.
>
>Like I said, I'm not looking to buy anything yet but if you have any
>suggestions on what to keep an eye out for, please let me know.

Not a dumb terminal, I'm using a 386sx (MS-DOS 5.0) with Telix.
--
A tuna is a way of Liff

Jan v/d Broek
balg...@xs4all.nl

[John Goerzen]

On 2022-06-15, Jan van den Broek <fort...@xs4all.nl> wrote:
>>Like I said, I'm not looking to buy anything yet but if you have any
>>suggestions on what to keep an eye out for, please let me know.
>
> Not a dumb terminal, I'm using a 386sx (MS-DOS 5.0) with Telix.

How's its performance?

I've been somewhat astonished at how horribly slow the real dumb terminals are.

Even my vt510, which seems to be the fastest, has to use XOFF when I start emacs
because it can't keep up with the escape sequences at that point and drops them,
unless I set it all the way down to 9600bps (it will support line rates up to
115200bps). Something of an additional annoyance is that these real dumb
terminals support hardware flow control, but using the DTR pin, not RTS/CTS, and
that isn't supported on Linux (though it is on FreeBSD).

My Wyse WY-55 is worse than the vt510, and my IBM 3151 won't even support a line
rate above 19200.

John

[Christian Brunschen]

In article <t5vv2a$8mf$1...@dont-email.me>,

Jason Evans <jse...@mailfence.com> wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>I'm going to be moving soon and after I get settled in, I would like to find an
>dumb terminal that I can use with a serial connection to a raspberry pi. I'd
>like any suggestions you might have for such a machine.
>
>The only thing that I ask is that it has a serial port that doesn't require a
>lot of modifications to get going, isn't too rare and therefore expensive, and
>I am partial to amber screens instead of green screens.
>

>Like I said, I'm not looking to buy anything yet but if you have any
>suggestions on what to keep an eye out for, please let me know.

There is the VT-69:

http://violence.works/
https://hackaday.io/project/163829-vt-69-handheld-terminal

>Jason

// Christian

[Charlie Gibbs]

On 2022-06-15, John Goerzen <jgoe...@complete.org> wrote:

> On 2022-06-15, Jan van den Broek <fort...@xs4all.nl> wrote:
>
>>> Like I said, I'm not looking to buy anything yet but if you have any
>>> suggestions on what to keep an eye out for, please let me know.
>>
>> Not a dumb terminal, I'm using a 386sx (MS-DOS 5.0) with Telix.
>
> How's its performance?
>
> I've been somewhat astonished at how horribly slow the real dumb
> terminals are.
>
> Even my vt510, which seems to be the fastest, has to use XOFF when I
> start emacs because it can't keep up with the escape sequences at that
> point and drops them, unless I set it all the way down to 9600bps (it
> will support line rates up to 115200bps).

C'mon, 9600 bps was blazingly fast in those days. That's as fast as my
Heath 19 would go prior to the Super 19 upgrade - and even then it would
struggle at 19200.

> Something of an additional annoyance is that these real dumb terminals
> support hardware flow control, but using the DTR pin, not RTS/CTS, and
> that isn't supported on Linux (though it is on FreeBSD).

Looks like it's time to wire up a custom RS-232 cable crossing DTR and
RTS...

> My Wyse WY-55 is worse than the vt510, and my IBM 3151 won't even
> support a line rate above 19200.

The Univac 90/30s I worked on in the late '70s offered an async option
if you really wanted it, although the standard was synchronous at up
to 9600 bps. (With modems costing about a dollar per bps, 9600 was
reserved to cable runs within the building unless you had _really_
deep pockets.) The async port wouldn't go any faster than 2400 bps -
async is a low-speed protocol, doncha know. :-)

[Charlie Gibbs]

How delightfully perverse! I'm gratified to see that they spelled
"DE-9" correctly. I'm tired of correcting all the people who insist
on calling it "DB-9".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-subminiature

[Charles Richmond]

On 6/15/2022 3:55 PM, John Goerzen wrote:
> On 2022-06-15, Jan van den Broek <fort...@xs4all.nl> wrote:
>>> Like I said, I'm not looking to buy anything yet but if you have any
>>> suggestions on what to keep an eye out for, please let me know.
>>
>> Not a dumb terminal, I'm using a 386sx (MS-DOS 5.0) with Telix.
>
> How's its performance?
>

[... snip ...] [... snip ...] [... snip ...]

>
> My Wyse WY-55 is worse than the vt510, and my IBM 3151 won't even support a line
> rate above 19200.
>

At a PPOE, I used a Digital Equipment VT-220 which was attached via a
termserver to an ethernet network to rlogin to one of the workstations.
This terminal could keep up with listing out a file at 19200 baud...
as long as all the lines had only 40 characters or less. If the file
had a grouping of lines with 70 or 80 characters, the speed of the
display would bog down...

I did *not* like the 220 for many reasons... not the least being that
the escape key was badly placed. We were running SVR4 Unix. But the
terminal had a monochrome amber display.

[Charlie Gibbs]

On 2022-06-16, Charles Richmond <code...@aquaporin4.com> wrote:

> At a PPOE, I used a Digital Equipment VT-220 which was attached via a
> termserver to an ethernet network to rlogin to one of the workstations.
> This terminal could keep up with listing out a file at 19200 baud...
> as long as all the lines had only 40 characters or less. If the file
> had a grouping of lines with 70 or 80 characters, the speed of the
> display would bog down...

Interesting. I was thinking of overhead involved in scrolling the
screen, but this sounds different. Maybe it was smart enough to
recognize short lines and not bother shifting blank areas.

The Univac mainframe terminals I worked with had serious scrolling
overhead; they would take 20 milliseconds to scroll an entire screen
of data, and they were blind to incoming data during that time.
At 9600 bps you had to pad each scroll sequence with 20 NULs
to avoid data loss.

> I did *not* like the 220 for many reasons... not the least being that
> the escape key was badly placed. We were running SVR4 Unix. But the
> terminal had a monochrome amber display.

The escape key was the least of your worries. Although the VT-100
had quite a nice keyboard, the designers dropped the ball on the
VT-220 and successors, incorporating the worst misfeatures of the
original IBM Personal Computer keyboard: the extra key between Z
and shift, and the remotely-placed return key.

Fortunately I never had to use any of the later DEC terminals.
The horrors that Univac perpetrated on their later keyboards,
however, were even worse.

IBM has a lot to answer for: in this case, setting keyboard
design back 10 years.

[Peter Flass]

The escape sequences were a bit slower than just displaying data, but what
could you DO with a faster terminal? How fast can you read data as it
scrolls by on the screen?

--
Pete

[Joe Pfeiffer]

I wrote a terminal emulator that ran on Datapoint workstations once...
it turned out there was an array of pointers, one for each line of
text to display (graphics? Surely you jest. This was a business
machine). Things like scrolling were much quicker than they'd have been
if I'd actually had to move the text around.

[Ahem A Rivet's Shot]

On Wed, 15 Jun 2022 20:55:19 -0000 (UTC)
John Goerzen <jgoe...@complete.org> wrote:

> Something of an additional annoyance is that these real dumb
> terminals support hardware flow control, but using the DTR pin, not
> RTS/CTS, and that isn't supported on Linux (though it is on FreeBSD).

There's a reason so many of us carried RS232 break out boxes, patch
boxes, gender benders etc. Black Box did a very handy set back in the day,
I saw some bits of mine a couple of years ago.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

[Joe Pfeiffer]

Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste...@eircom.net> writes:

> On Wed, 15 Jun 2022 20:55:19 -0000 (UTC)
> John Goerzen <jgoe...@complete.org> wrote:
>
>> Something of an additional annoyance is that these real dumb
>> terminals support hardware flow control, but using the DTR pin, not
>> RTS/CTS, and that isn't supported on Linux (though it is on FreeBSD).
>
> There's a reason so many of us carried RS232 break out boxes, patch
> boxes, gender benders etc. Black Box did a very handy set back in the day,
> I saw some bits of mine a couple of years ago.

I think I still have mine... hmmm.... yep. Just found it. Made by
Inmac.

[Ahem A Rivet's Shot]

Oh ye glods Inmac - for a while I got three of their catalogues at
a time because they hated to lose any circulation.

[Michael Cardell Widerkrantz]

Charlie Gibbs <cgi...@kltpzyxm.invalid>, 2022-06-16 05:00 (+0000):

> Although the VT-100 had quite a nice keyboard, the designers dropped
> the ball on the VT-220 and successors, incorporating the worst
> misfeatures of the original IBM Personal Computer keyboard: the extra
> key between Z and shift, and the remotely-placed return key.

There was the DEC LK421 "Unix keyboard", though:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:LK421.jpg

--
MC, https://hack.org/mc/

[Freddy1X]

Was that on a 2200/5500/6600 series, or a 1500, or an 1800/3800 series.
Maybe I forgot some of them.

--
Carefully cut along this line.

/|>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>\|
/| I may be demented \|
/| but I'm not crazy! \|
/|<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<\|
* SPAyM trap: there is no X in my address *

[Joe Pfeiffer]

Freddy1X <fred...@indyX.netX> writes:

> Joe Pfeiffer wrote:
>
>> I wrote a terminal emulator that ran on Datapoint workstations once...
>> it turned out there was an array of pointers, one for each line of
>> text to display (graphics? Surely you jest. This was a business
>> machine). Things like scrolling were much quicker than they'd have been
>> if I'd actually had to move the text around.
>
> Was that on a 2200/5500/6600 series, or a 1500, or an 1800/3800 series.
> Maybe I forgot some of them.

I'm thinking it was on a 2200 series, but I couldn't swear to it. It
was 1980....

[Freddy1X]

In 1980 I believe that the 2200 & 1100 were the only processors that
Datapoint had out at the time. Your view was 12 rows of 80 characters each.
Invariably green phosphor. ISTR that the 1100s were paired up with 8"
diskette drives, ant the 2200 used dual cassette decks.

Was the display board the serial or RAM version?
The serial display board had a bizarre way of updating the displayed
characters depending on how the program ran it. And it was SLOW. So much
so that when I had to run diagnostics on the tape decks, I would swap in the
RAM display board just so that I could be done in a reasonable time.

I never got to play with them for any length of time because I was a 1 man
remote office, driving to location as repair service was needed.

Freddy,
Datapoint field circus, 1979 to 1990.
--
You are not a winner if your game piece reveals "PLEASE TRY AGAIN".

[Jan van den Broek]

Wed, 15 Jun 2022 20:55:19 -0000 (UTC)

John Goerzen <jgoe...@complete.org> schrieb:

>On 2022-06-15, Jan van den Broek <fort...@xs4all.nl> wrote:
>>>Like I said, I'm not looking to buy anything yet but if you have any
>>>suggestions on what to keep an eye out for, please let me know.
>>
>> Not a dumb terminal, I'm using a 386sx (MS-DOS 5.0) with Telix.
>
>How's its performance?

Depending on what you want. I'm using it at 19200, which is fast enough
for me. I mainly use it for editing, compiling, usenet.

[Schnipp]

[Jan van den Broek]

Wed, 18 May 2022 11:33:08 -0400
Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> schrieb:
>On Wed, 18 May 2022 00:09:54 -0000 (UTC), Chris Adams wrote:
>>
>> Note that the Pi serial port is not going to work directly on a classic
>> terminal. The Pi signalling is not RS-232 (typically +12/-12V IIRC) but
>> 3.3V/0V. Sending more than 3.3V into a Pi serial pin will fry it.
>>
>> There are pre-made Pi-to-USB serial adapters for connecting to a PC, but
>> I don't know if there are pre-made Pi-to-read-RS-232 adapters.
>
>Curious, somebody threw out a 2011 LED TV. One jack on the backside is
>labeled RS-232. What would you do with that on a TV?

Turning it on and off, switching input, changing channels/volume/etc.
At a ppoe we were maintaing a narrowcasting application, rs232 was used
at lot.

>It also had some USB jacks; that I can understand.

[John Goerzen]

On 2022-06-21, Jan van den Broek <fort...@xs4all.nl> wrote:
> Wed, 15 Jun 2022 20:55:19 -0000 (UTC)
> John Goerzen <jgoe...@complete.org> schrieb:
>>On 2022-06-15, Jan van den Broek <fort...@xs4all.nl> wrote:
>>>>Like I said, I'm not looking to buy anything yet but if you have any
>>>>suggestions on what to keep an eye out for, please let me know.
>>>
>>> Not a dumb terminal, I'm using a 386sx (MS-DOS 5.0) with Telix.
>>
>>How's its performance?
>
> Depending on what you want. I'm using it at 19200, which is fast enough
> for me. I mainly use it for editing, compiling, usenet.

I'm trying to remember my days of a 386SX/25 in OS/2. My speeds then were
probably limited by my modem (33.6 at best). I don't recall any obvious PC-side
slowdowns like I see on the vt510.

Also trying to remember the days of a 7.16MHz 8088ish DOS box. I guess I didn't
have a modem faster than 2400bps in those days. Still, I think it was able to
run LapLink at 115200 but I may be somewhat mistaken about that, and that may be
a different problem to ANSI video processing too.

I may have to give this a try one of these days.

John

[Joe Pfeiffer]

Freddy1X <fred...@indyX.netX> writes:

> Joe Pfeiffer wrote:
>
>> Freddy1X <fred...@indyX.netX> writes:
>>
>>> Joe Pfeiffer wrote:
>>>
>>>> I wrote a terminal emulator that ran on Datapoint workstations once...
>>>> it turned out there was an array of pointers, one for each line of
>>>> text to display (graphics? Surely you jest. This was a business
>>>> machine). Things like scrolling were much quicker than they'd have been
>>>> if I'd actually had to move the text around.
>>>
>>> Was that on a 2200/5500/6600 series, or a 1500, or an 1800/3800 series.
>>> Maybe I forgot some of them.
>>
>> I'm thinking it was on a 2200 series, but I couldn't swear to it. It
>> was 1980....
>
> In 1980 I believe that the 2200 & 1100 were the only processors that
> Datapoint had out at the time. Your view was 12 rows of 80 characters each.
> Invariably green phosphor. ISTR that the 1100s were paired up with 8"
> diskette drives, ant the 2200 used dual cassette decks.

They had introduced their ARCNET network at that point (probably the
major reason they were picked), so I don't recall any local disk or
cassette storage at all.

> Was the display board the serial or RAM version?

I have no recollection whatever. I don't even remember that there was a
choice.

[Ahem A Rivet's Shot]

On Wed, 22 Jun 2022 23:56:58 -0000 (UTC)
John Goerzen <jgoe...@complete.org> wrote:

> I'm trying to remember my days of a 386SX/25 in OS/2. My speeds then were
> probably limited by my modem (33.6 at best). I don't recall any obvious
> PC-side slowdowns like I see on the vt510.

PCs tended to come with a buffered UART that cut down the interrupt
rate no end.

[Kurt Weiske]

To: John Goerzen
-=> John Goerzen wrote to alt.folklore.computers <=-

JG> I'm trying to remember my days of a 386SX/25 in OS/2. My speeds then
JG> were probably limited by my modem (33.6 at best). I don't recall any
JG> obvious PC-side slowdowns like I see on the vt510.

I ran OS/2 2.1 on a PS/2 model 80 baxk in 1991-92, but I think I only had a
2400 baud modem back then. OS/2 could multitask well, though - I could call
my BBS, connect to a MS Lan Manager network and share my files, connect to a
AS/400 terminal session via twinax, and run Word and Excel natively - with 8
MB of RAM!

JG> Also trying to remember the days of a 7.16MHz 8088ish DOS box. I guess
JG> I didn't have a modem faster than 2400bps in those days. Still, I
JG> think it was able to run LapLink at 115200 but I may be somewhat
JG> mistaken about that, and that may be a different problem to ANSI video
JG> processing too.

It was all about the UART with AT-class machines. With my BBS, I had a
socketed serial card and swapped out an 8250 for a 16550 UART and could run
14.4 all day long. I don't recall if my serial card was 8-bit or 16-bit, and
am unsure if an 8-bit card would be the bottleneck on an XT-class machine.

kurt weiske | kweiske at realitycheckbbs dot org
| http://realitycheckbbs.org
| 1:218/700@fidonet

[Kurt Weiske]

To: Ahem A Rivet's Shot
-=> Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote to alt.folklore.computers <=-

AAS> PCs tended to come with a buffered UART that cut down the
AAS> interrupt rate no end.

Cheap cards typically came with an 8250 or 16450 UART, which had (I think) a
2-byte buffer. You'd need to either spend more to get a card with a 16550
(16-byte buffer) or if you were lucky, upgrade your existing (socketed) card
by swapping out the UART chip.

The 16450 was pretty much useless above 9600 baud.

[Scott Lurndal]

"Kurt Weiske" <kurt....@realitycheckbbs.org.remove-11mi-this> writes:
> To: John Goerzen
>-=> John Goerzen wrote to alt.folklore.computers <=-
>
> JG> I'm trying to remember my days of a 386SX/25 in OS/2. My speeds then
> JG> were probably limited by my modem (33.6 at best). I don't recall any
> JG> obvious PC-side slowdowns like I see on the vt510.
>
>I ran OS/2 2.1 on a PS/2 model 80 baxk in 1991-92, but I think I only had a
>2400 baud modem back then. OS/2 could multitask well, though - I could call
>my BBS, connect to a MS Lan Manager network and share my files, connect to a
>AS/400 terminal session via twinax, and run Word and Excel natively - with 8
>MB of RAM!
>
> JG> Also trying to remember the days of a 7.16MHz 8088ish DOS box. I guess
> JG> I didn't have a modem faster than 2400bps in those days. Still, I
> JG> think it was able to run LapLink at 115200 but I may be somewhat
> JG> mistaken about that, and that may be a different problem to ANSI video
> JG> processing too.
>
>It was all about the UART with AT-class machines. With my BBS, I had a
>socketed serial card and swapped out an 8250 for a 16550 UART and could run
>14.4 all day long. I don't recall if my serial card was 8-bit or 16-bit, and
>am unsure if an 8-bit card would be the bottleneck on an XT-class machine.

The 16550 or 16450? The 16550 came later and added a 16 byte FIFO for
inbound characters; the 16450 supported higher data rates than the 8250,
but ultimately was bounded by interrupt service routine performance.

[Ahem A Rivet's Shot]

On Fri, 24 Jun 2022 12:52:31 GMT
sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) wrote:

> The 16550 or 16450? The 16550 came later and added a 16 byte FIFO for
> inbound characters;

Then the 16550A came out with the bugs fixed. With them on two 16
port cards I managed to run 32 modems at 19200 on a 50MHz 486 without
dropping a byte.

[Anssi Saari]

Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste...@eircom.net> writes:

> On Wed, 22 Jun 2022 23:56:58 -0000 (UTC)
> John Goerzen <jgoe...@complete.org> wrote:
>
>> I'm trying to remember my days of a 386SX/25 in OS/2. My speeds then were
>> probably limited by my modem (33.6 at best). I don't recall any obvious
>> PC-side slowdowns like I see on the vt510.
>
> PCs tended to come with a buffered UART that cut down the interrupt
> rate no end.

Did they? I remember buying an ISA card by SIIG with the 16550 UART that
had the huge 16 byte buffer back in 1993 when I got a 14400 bps
modem. With the V.42bis compression I think you could have at least 2x
compression so double data rate over the serial link. Might've had a 486
by then though.

In my computers the built in ports had just the no buffer
16450s. Same with the multi-I/O boards (2xserial, 1xparallel, 2xIDE on
single board).

Maybe the buffered UARTs were common later? I moved away from modems to
ISDN (ISA card) around 1996 or 1997, then ADSL (PCI card) and then
mostly ethernet for communication.

[Ahem A Rivet's Shot]

On Thu, 23 Jun 2022 17:28:49 +0300
Anssi Saari <a...@sci.fi> wrote:

> Maybe the buffered UARTs were common later? I moved away from modems to
> ISDN (ISA card) around 1996 or 1997, then ADSL (PCI card) and then
> mostly ethernet for communication.

They started to get common around 1994/5 - along with the rise in
fast modem use.

[Anne & Lynn Wheeler]

Anssi Saari <a...@sci.fi> writes:
> Did they? I remember buying an ISA card by SIIG with the 16550 UART that
> had the huge 16 byte buffer back in 1993 when I got a 14400 bps
> modem. With the V.42bis compression I think you could have at least 2x
> compression so double data rate over the serial link. Might've had a 486
> by then though.
>
> In my computers the built in ports had just the no buffer
> 16450s. Same with the multi-I/O boards (2xserial, 1xparallel, 2xIDE on
> single board).
>
> Maybe the buffered UARTs were common later? I moved away from modems to
> ISDN (ISA card) around 1996 or 1997, then ADSL (PCI card) and then
> mostly ethernet for communication.

1993, had left IBM ... and was doing work from home. I got offer to do
modem drivers (unix, windows, dos) for PAGESAT in return for downlink
with full netnews feed. I had a RS6000/320 and SGI Indy on my desk and
couple 486 machines (one running waffle, bulletin board software that I
made the netnews feed available on) ... had 16550 UART boards. Also
wrote article on modem drivers & pagesat for boardwatch magazine (had a
picture of me in backyard with PAGESAT dish). Started out 9600, but they
had to double it to 19.2 with increase in images (and there were
periodic further increases).

16550
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16550_UART
Pagesat
http://www.art.net/lile/pagesat/netnews.html
Pagesat at 115.2kbps
http://www.art.net/lile/ncit/service.html
Boardwatch
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boardwatch
Waffle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffle_(BBS_software)

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

[Kurt Weiske]

To: Ahem A Rivet's Shot
-=> Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote to alt.folklore.computers <=-

AAS> Then the 16550A came out with the bugs fixed. With them on two
AAS> 16 port cards I managed to run 32 modems at 19200 on a 50MHz 486
AAS> without dropping a byte.

Digiboards! Those things were awesome.

I ran a store POS system back in the day running Excellenet WAN software.
the hub ran on a 486 running OS/2, the store cash registers either ran OS/2
or DOS. Every night as the stores closed they'd shut down the registers,
close out the tills, and the register would "phone home", sending store
sales, credit card sales info, employee payroll and inventory figures, and
the hub would send back data updates and new price lookup files for the
registers.

I was running a dial-up BBS back then, the store-and-forward topology was
reminiscent of Fidonet. I'd often thought you could do the same thing with a
Fido mailer and save a ton of money.

The batch files running the stores were written in DOS Batch or REXX,
meaning if you fat-fingered an update, you were walking a non-technical
store manager through using a line editor over the phone to make the fix.

At certain times of the day, I'd have 32 14.4 multitech modems lit and
transferring files, and it worked like a charm.

kurt weiske | kweiske at realitycheckbbs dot org
| http://realitycheckbbs.org
| 1:218/700@fidonet

[Ahem A Rivet's Shot]

On Sat, 25 Jun 2022 09:50:00 -0700
"Kurt Weiske" <kurt....@realitycheckbbs.org.remove-tq0-this> wrote:

> To: Ahem A Rivet's Shot
> -=> Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote to alt.folklore.computers <=-
>
> AAS> Then the 16550A came out with the bugs fixed. With them on

> AAS> two 16 port cards I managed to run 32 modems at 19200 on a 50MHz 486

> AAS> without dropping a byte.
>
> Digiboards! Those things were awesome.

Correct, they were indeed Digiboards.

> At certain times of the day, I'd have 32 14.4 multitech modems lit and
> transferring files, and it worked like a charm.

It happened at 6pm on the dot every day for me, when the evening
cheap phone rate cut in - I was running a dial-up ISP.

I was once in Demon's Finchley office at 6pm and got to see their
bank of modems (90 or so at the time IIRC all running on a Sun box with
SCSI attached serial[1] ports) suddenly light up in a ripple across the
rack right on the dot of 6pm.

[1] Of course these days we have serial attached SCSI.

[Anne & Lynn Wheeler]

Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste...@eircom.net> writes:
> [1] Of course these days we have serial attached SCSI.

trivia: circa 1990 , IBM Hursley did 9333, SCSI disk drives ... with
serial copper running packetized SCSI protocol, originally was
80mbits/sec full duplex (160mbits/sec aggregate). 1988, I was asked to
work with LLNL on standardizing some of serial stuff they were playing
with, quickly becomes fibre channel standard (initially 1gbit, full
duplex, 2gbit, 200GBYTE) I had hoped that 9333 could morpth into
interoperable 1/8 & 1/4 speed FCS, but instead it morphs into SSA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Storage_Architecture

[John Goerzen]

On 2022-06-23, Kurt Weiske <kurt....@realitycheckbbs.org.remove-11mi-this> wrote:
> AS/400 terminal session via twinax, and run Word and Excel natively - with 8

"twinax". Now there's a word I haven't seen, in that context, for awhile.

I worked for a manufacturing company that finally got off the AS/400 in 2005.
That twinax was never removed from the walls, and it is the kind of stout stuff
that will probably be around until the sun goes nova...

I had a real moment of confusion when I first heard of Twinax being used for
10Gb copper Ethernet. Weird echoes, that.

John

[Vir Campestris]

On 24/06/2022 14:20, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
> On Fri, 24 Jun 2022 12:52:31 GMT
> sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) wrote:
>
>> The 16550 or 16450? The 16550 came later and added a 16 byte FIFO for
>> inbound characters;
>
> Then the 16550A came out with the bugs fixed. With them on two 16
> port cards I managed to run 32 modems at 19200 on a 50MHz 486 without
> dropping a byte.
>

I ran 4 channels on a '186 along with networking once on an embedded
system. No problem at all.

The problem wasn't handling the interrupts, it wass coexisting with
someone else's software that goes non-interruptible.

Andy

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2022-09-04 23:00, Bud Frede wrote:
> Jason Evans <jse...@mailfence.com> writes:
>
>> On Tue, 17 May 2022 10:47:20 -0400, Dan Espen wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Can't imagine actually wanting a tube CRT in my house.
>>
>> One of the current hot nerd topics is the idea of putting together retro-
>> futuristic cyberdeck devices as secondary or project devices. Cyberdecks
>> are machines with tiny lcd screens with nearly full sized keyboards.
>
> I would think that a cyberdeck would be no good without a set of 'trodes
> to induct the display right into your brain? :-)
>
> A computer with a nearly full-sized keyboard but an unusably small LCD
> display doesn't sound like much fun to me. What am I missing?

Queue Terry Gilliam... Hello fresnel lens. :-D

Johnny