Cromemco 3102 Terminal Emulation

[cro memcos]

As per previous post ... I found out I actually don't have 3102 Terminal Emulation working.  (PCCOM.EXE is doing VT100 emulation, right?)  Leading to this question:

I want to use CDOS and a number of programs are hard wired to 3102 emulation and I would like to use them as is.

There appears to be ZERO, I mean no way to do 3102 terminal emulation

Am I wrong?

Can anybody point me in the direction of something that works on any platform:  DOS, Windows 16bit,  Windows 32/64bit, macOS

I find nothing.

The 3102 terminal is a rebadged Beehive DM30 but again no emulators for that either.

[Jay Cotton]

Not quite true.  There is a terminal emulator that will work with CDOS.

https://thehighnibble.com/vt132/#vt132-designed-for-rc2104-edition

I have the stand alone version, lower part of the web page.  It works grate

and the vendor is very responsive.

JC

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[Jay Cotton]

I guess I should have followed the other thread.  I do concur, there are no software emulators for the

3102 terminal.

Should we write one ?

jc

[Walt Perko]

Hi,

 

Perhaps the 3102 terminal could be an additional terminal emulator added to the FabGL library of emulators for the ESP32? 

 

 

 

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[Richard Deane]

I think the terminal emulation in Windows Kermit K95 may have what you are looking for. Not C-kermit as that doesn't do legacy emulations. 

Look at kermit.org.  After Columbia dropped Kermit, K95 was pulled for licensing issues but a kiwi (NZ) has built a usable flavour for a serial or plain telnet connection.

K95 has many legacy terminal emulation types. 

It is conceivable that a cromix or cdos flavour of kermit might also have the emulation required.

Richard.

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[Mike Stein]

Definitely! ;-)

Jay, how much was your version of the VT132 Stand Alone after shipping and any extra required parts?

And does he actually mention the 3102  anywhere? Is the emulation 100% ?

 TIA

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[Jay Cotton]

Hi Mike:  I don't recall exactly, but around $120 US, he is in Australia so shipping was pricey.  The emulator runs the screen editor without issues.

I can't remember if he includes a power brick, but I suspect not.  

The thing I really liked was when I found a bug, he fixed it overnight and because the board has wifi it was able to update from the network.

Since the Beehive terminals are not findable, this is about the only viable option.

I think he says it works with his Cromemco emulator (IMSAI emulator running Cromix).  The 3102 is in the terminal selection

menu.

jc

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[cro memcos]

Thanks to all who replied so far.   So I started making a quick comparison of Escape Code sequences and find the IBM 3101 terminal is close to the 3102 terminal in some respects but rather a poor subset.

I recall spending many hours binary modifying screen.com to different terminal types, but as I say in 2024 I just want a working 3102 software emulator !!

From what I check the High Nibble emulator makes no mention of 3102 terminal and whilst Kermit 95 list  is impressive nothing seems to quite hit the spot!

Here is an example file that no worky   DISKDIAG.COM

m/cromemco/code/disks/033 CDOS 02.58/diskdiag.com at main · cromemcos/m (github.com)

My thought continues to be if there was a decent github ASCII terminal emulator then take the source a redo it for C3102,  but so far nothing.

Anybody any further ideas.  Can you try DISKDIAG.COM  in CDOS?

[cro memcos]

Here are the exact characters output I note that the program is using ESC F for cursor address which is just typical because the almost compatible terminals use ESC Y which Cromemco could have used.

[David McNaughton]

Hello, Dave from TheHighNibble.

I thought I could add to the conversation by providing the information that isn't on my web site yet.

The cost of the VT132 kit that Jay ordered is USD$97.76 This included some options that you may or may not need, worth +$20, so you could pay as little as ~$80

The C3102 implementation includes the following with reference to the table above:

Keyboard:

  Up, Down, Left, right cursor keys (as above)

  Home key (as above)

  Backspace key (as above)

  Delete key (sends ASCII 0x7f)

  Function keys F1-10 (sends <Stx>p through <Stx>y)

  and Shifted Function keys <sh>F1-<sh>F10 act as F11-F20 (sends <Stx>z through <Stx>l)

Escape sequences:

  all (as listed above) 

       - with the exception of <Esc>Q - insert char at cursor (happy to add this, but I've never seen it used!)

       - only uses <Esc>F for cursor address/position (again happy to add <Esc>Y,  but I've never seen it used)

  additionally

       - toggle Cursor : <Esc>Z

       - start blink : <Esc>l

       - normal video: <Esc>m

       - enter/exit graphics mode - for line drawing - I've seen this used in some Cromemco utility programs like hdtest

       - attribute set : <Esc> d nn - where nn sets the desired attribute supported attributes are Half (dim), Blink, Reverse, Underline

This was the necessary set of functionality needed to use CDOS and Cromix 127 on my emulator

If anyone has a real C3102, there is one more feature I want to add but can't figure out without a real C3102 for someone to run some tests for me, and that is support for the clock function. The C3102 has a real-time-clock and Cromix 127 can use that to get the time after bootup. There are escape codes for setting and reading the clock, but I have't been able to figure out the format for the time. 

What Jay has is a beta firmware, but the C3102 support has been shipping in production in my related kit the S-132 (only useful as an add-on for the IMSAI8080 & Cromemco Z-1 replica kits)

So if people are interested, I'll get busy and move this out of beta and put it into a production release for the VT132 (and update the website).

[Mike Arnold]

Hi, the 3102 is a bit odd in its characteristics. When we sold Cromemcos we could not justify the price of the 3102 so shipped the ADM3a, Televideos or, later, Wyse. These were a reasonably compatible family (unless you wanted something advanced). We hacked all the Cromemco diagnostics to use these VDUs and, obviously, configured Wordstar. This is exactly what I still use today on my CDOS system. If you want the Televideo versions of HDTEST, DISKDIAG and SCREEN then let me know. Alternatively, it is not too difficult to amend them yourself using DEBUG.

Ironically, in the 1980s I had a 3102 in my office connected to a Z2H and needed to connect to other computers in the company which were configured for Televideo. So I wrote a buffered terminal emulator to make the 3102 and Z2H (thousands of pounds worth) into a Televideo VDU. Weird!

What I do remember about the 3102 was the clever ^B handshake for function keys and the use of the terminal as a real time clock.

All good fun!

Mike

[Aron Hoekstra]

I have noticed that RT.COM /T (the built-in terminal part of Dave Dunfield's DOS "Cromemco Disks via serial cable" application) has some limited built-in support for Cromemco terminal emulation. Not sure how extensive it is but worked reasonably well for the HDTEST util, etc.

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[Mike Stein]

Very interesting; I'll have to check it out.

Thanks!

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[cro memcos]

To Mike A, please can you send me the Televideo or at least any non C3102 terminal version of the Cromemco Diagnostics.  This will save me the time of trying to find out where the ESCape table is being hidden for these programs.   Do you have DISKDIAG.COM also !

Next,   I have just independently come across Dave McNaughtons posting  (to this forum!) about his hardware card some 2 years ago, and I see above he just made a posting.

So I will see if the budget can stretch to ordering one.     Overall I'd far rather have it in software on my workstation though, but so far still can't find a suitable Github ASCII terminal emulator with USB support, that's Linux/macOS or DOS with source I can start to modify.  I thought that there would be zillions of them!

regards marcus

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[Peter Higgins]

On Friday, February 2, 2024 at 11:58:51 AM UTC-8 David McNaughton wrote:

What Jay has is a beta firmware, but the C3102 support has been shipping in production in my related kit the S-132 (only useful as an add-on for the IMSAI8080 & Cromemco Z-1 replica kits)

So if people are interested, I'll get busy and move this out of beta and put it into a production release for the VT132 (and update the website).

I am interested in a production release for C3102 support !

[Mike Arnold]

Marcus,

I have got the hacked versions of CDOS programs that you want but every time I try to attach them I get an error message that I am not allowed to attach that type of file. Any ideas?

Mike

[Peter Higgins]

On Saturday, February 3, 2024 at 4:08:23 AM UTC-8 Mike Arnold wrote:

Marcus,

I have got the hacked versions of CDOS programs that you want but every time I try to attach them I get an error message that I am not allowed to attach that type of file. Any ideas?

Try putting them into one ZIP file, and upload that. 

[Mike Arnold]

Tried that and it rejected it. Changed the extension of the zip file to .txt and still rejected. Tried .pdf and rejected again. Perhaps there is a blanket ban on me attaching anything! Not that I am paranoid or anything!!!

[Mike Arnold]

Just trying something...

On Saturday 3 February 2024 at 00:11:34 UTC Peter Higgins wrote:

[Mike Arnold]

Interesting - that worked. I suspect that the site is reading the file and determining its format.

[Mike Arnold]

[Mike Arnold]

Marcus,
attached are a few useful CDOS files with those, where appropriate, hacked for Televideo. You will have to rename the .doc to .com because the attachment security will not allow .com files to be included. 

Note that I call the hacked version of diskdiag fdtest to avoid loading the wrong one.
I also include align.com which I wrote for the workshop to align drives. It knows where the alignment tracks are on Dymek disks (set max track to 76. to switch to 8in alignment parameters). It also shows rpm. I used a technique which allows it to work with both 3102 or Televideo without reconfiguration. Challenge: how did I do it?
I also include dirlist which is a useful utility written by a friend and brilliant coder (Christopher Webster) for reading the directory into a file. He did far cleverer things than this but the utility is really useful for creating backup .cmd files.
Also in there is my CDOS .z80 drivers file which is really stripped down because CDOS had put on so much weight. I removed all the 3101/3102 code so that I could have a simple platform for use with Wyse 50.
Watch out for CDOS 2.5x boot. Hard coded into it is ESC . 9 which turns on function keys on a 3102 but fills a Televideo screen with numeric 9s. Painful but we just used debug to search for the string in cdos.com and patch it to nulls.
Happy computing.
Mike

[Walt Perko]

Hi,

 

Rename the extension as .PIZ or MOC etc.  the filters look for zip and com and probably a few other extensions, so renaming the extension gets past most email and Google systems. 

 

 

 

 

==============================================================================================
C U L8r,  °|°  Walt Perko  °|°        "Kids ... teach them the good stuff, and they still learn the bad stuff on their own."

http://www.R2Pv1.com/  RoboGuts™ Intelligent content for 3D printing making S.T.E.A.M. education better, easier and more affordable 

 

Experiments to learn how to use various Electronic Components, Structured Computer Programming, Phonemes for Speech &Song in any language, and Art.

                         "The World Needs a New Economic Model"
==============================================================================================

            Sent from the Cyber7

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