AT&T 630 terminal - software ??

[bill vermillion]

In article <2028 at ndsuvax.UUCP> ncoverby at ndsuvax.UUCP (Glen Overby) writes:
>
(pricing of ATT 630 deleted.  wjv)
 
>I find this price to be a bit above that of the common PC clone.  So why
>hasn't somebody written a a terminal emulator for such a machine which
>operates somewhat like the BLIT?  Even a PC should at least be able to
>display multiple windows without crawling too badly, and if you put a
>fancier video adapter (such as EGA or VGA) on the machine, you can have more
>than 25 lines (this, of course, does bring the price of the PC closer to
>that of the Real Thing).

I work on a lot of little Xenix system.  One site has 11 installations varying
between 286 & 386 machines.  Most connections are terminals, but about 8 or so
are PC's with terminal emulation.  This is so that one serial port can talk
asynch to Xenix the other can talk Burroughs TDI Polled interface.

A PC doens't seem smart enought to be able to walk and chew gum at the same
time. :-)  By that I mean that the PC doing 9600bps can't do a decent vt100
emulation (using Smarterm) and give screen displays that approach that of a
dedicated terminal.  It had been observed (not timed with a watch but gut
level reactions) that there was no difference in display speeds between 2400,
4800 and 9600.  The difference from 1200 to 2400 was slight.  This was noted
on an 8mHz AT box with Xenix 2.2.2 and a Computone board as the serial
handler.

Last week the system was replaced with an IBM 80-71 (16mHz version).  The
serial board was the Anvil Stallion.  Display speed has gone up - so part of
the limitation may have been handshaking in the Computone - however it was not
a speed problem with the Computone as 19,200 terminals worked fine.  The 9600
bps connections now display closer to a 4800 - but nowhere near what they
should look like on a 9600bps terminal.  I don't think that emulations even
approaching a BLIT would be effective.   If the PC clones were 10 mHz 286
machines they might work better.
-- 
Bill Vermillion - UUCP: {uiucuxc,hoptoad,petsd}!peora!rtmvax!bilver!bill
                      : bill at bilver.UUCP