VC404 The Standard

In message "VC404 The Standard", lwalker(a)mail.interlog.com writes: I also have a 404, discarded from a university lab many years ago. These terminals seem to have been popular in university student terminal rooms because they were relatively cheap. I seem to recall that the company founders were ex-University of Waterloo people. I've seen 404s not just in Canada but also in Britain, where they were the standard terminals on a university Vax system I once used. So I'm not too surprised Tony has a tech manual. (Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if Tony had a tech manual for Noah's Ark :) Unfortunately the keyboards were not that robust and after a few generations of students pounding away on them, the keyboard or the ribbon cable often became unreliable. That video connector on the back was useful for hooking into a big classroom overhead monitor so a whole class could learn from observing a terminal session. These terminals are very helpful for debugging RS-232 communications. The "transparent" switch on the back lets you choose to display all the ASCII control codes (eg, instead of performing a "line feed" it displays a little LF symbol). Larry, I don't have any tech docs but I do have a thin user manual. About all it tells you is what the special control codes are to clear the screen, move the cursor, etc. Still, it's the information you need to run Wordstar with it! E-mail me with your snail-mail address and I'll run off a copy for you. Regards, Arlen -- Arlen Michaels Nortel Ottawa, Canada (613) 763-2568 amichael(a)nortel.ca