Aucbvax.6236
fa.info-terms
utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!info-terms
Sat Feb 20 04:46:10 1982
General Terminal Corp. SW10
>From ihnss!ihuxl!stolaf!sft@Berkeley Sat Feb 20 04:20:06 1982
We just got one of these for testing on a VAX/VMS system. GTC claims that
this is an ANSI terminal, not a VT100 emulator, but that it supports enough
of the DEC features to be usable as a VT100 replacement.
The thing behaves like a fully-loaded (AVO, printer port) VT100 except:
No 132 columns
No double height/width characters (it does include the forms graphics set
and US/UK sets, though)
Only one attribute, which is jumper selectable to be low intensity or
reverse video.
The display is good. Green phosphor standard. Ours appears to show an
extra bit above the left edge of the underscore character. Is this
standard or a ROM defect in our sample?
Detached keyboard, basically similar to VT100. There are 12 programmable
function keys across the top as well as the DEC PF1-PF4 above the keypad.
There are two "control" keys - on either side of the space bar. Some
people are said to like this arrangement, but I use ^C, ^U, ^O, etc. too
often. There is a "function" key on the right hand side of the same row.
It's used to program the f1-f12 keys, clear the screen, and toggle the
XON/XOFF. Potentially confusing and it's in the wrong place as far as I'm
concerned.
Keyswitches are the same (mechanical) style as DEC, Lear Siegler, Heath, etc.
There is a 25th line on the display which indicates online/offline, caps lock,
and four programmable displays ("lights" L1-L4) in half intensity.
Keyboard setup, stored in non-volatile memory. Doesn't allow split
transmit/receive speed (so what!) but has just about everything else. It
even allows you to specify the logic levels for the printer BUSY lead
(busy high/BUSY or ready high/CTS).
The main logic board has just a few LSI chips and not much else on it.
It's slung underneath the CRT and easily removable. The power supply
and monitor boards are back inside. It appears that you must remove
the CRT to get at them. Things run warm, but not hot, and they've avoided
the style of connectors that have been such a headache on our Visual 100s.
The case is thin plastic. This makes the keyboard lightweight (if you
like to hold it in your lap), but makes the terminal look a little bit
cheap. I'm also a bit suspicious of its durability.
I ran the thing through a battery of tests without finding any obvious
glitches. The distributed VT100 termcap entry will work, but performance
is a lot better if you pull all the delays and add the extra insert,
delete, and scrolling region functions. (I couldn't try it at faster than
1200 baud, but I understand that VT100s can have troubles even at that
speed without fill. I also can't prove that the terminal wasn't generating
XON/XOFF. Can somebody check this out?)
I'm not terribly enthused, but I don't have any great need for VT100
compatibility on the systems that I use the most. It does look pretty
good for a cheap VT100 emulator on the VMS system where that's more
important.
Steve Tarr
ihnss!ihps3!stolaf!sft
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