12 Oct
2002
12 Oct
'02
9:55 p.m.
I wrote about the idea "Otter" <SecretaryBird(a)SoftHome.net> had
of using an IBM 5120 as a terminal:
But it would make an absolutely *terrible* terminal.
It only has 16*64
video, and unless you got the terminal software with it, you'll have to
write your own. In BASIC or APL, depending on which model you have. I
seriously doubt that it can keep up at 9600 bps or faster; as a
terminal they were normally only used for dialup at 300 bps or slower.
And I forgot to mention the main reason that it makes an awful terminal:
it uses three different character sets internally, NONE of which is
even similar to ASCII (or even EBCDIC).
Of course, a terminal program could translate the character codes for
the matching characters, but just like the ASCII-EBCDIC translation
problem, there are some printing characters and many control characters
that have no equivalents.