2 Feb
1998
2 Feb
'98
12:58 p.m.
At 03:35 PM 2/2/98 -0800, you wrote:
Yes, but the VT 320 is a LOT easier to read. I had forgotten that I had
a terminal program for the Portable Plus, I could use them too. The
software isn't looking for a VT terminal, just a plain ASCII terminal.
Joe
Joe <rigdonj(a)intellistar.net> wrote:
They're 2626A models.
Thanks Frank. I have two HP 2626s coming.
I'd like give them a try just
for kicks. I understand that they'll support up to four sessions
simultanously. Seems stange to think of running the Altair via something
like that.
2626A or 2626W? The latter were intended for use with a word-processing
product for the HP3000, called HPWORD. But that's another story, and
as terminals they don't behave much different from each other.
It's been a while since I did anything with them but I do remember
setting one up to do the multi-session thing just to see how it
worked. Conceptually it goes something like this: the terminal can
have up to four workspaces, where each workspace has a chunk of the
terminal's display buffer memory. You can then split the display into
two or four windows (tiles) into the workspaces and associate devices
with the workspaces (don't remember the details of this). But you
only have two datacomm ports, so I'm not really sure how you can
manage four sessions.
I wondered about that too. Here is what the manual says "The HP 2626A
is a multi-workspace, multi-window terminal with dual data communications
port capability. These and other capabilities may be dynamically configured
as four logically-independent virtual terminals. The terminal handles line
lengths up to 160 characters and offers foreign language options and an
integral printer option."
I wonder what a "virtual terminal" is?
Oh, how well did it work? I seem to remember thinking that it was
cumbersome to use, difficult to switch between workspaces and to
resize them as you were going. But I knew some other people who used
this to move small chunks of text between two connected host
computers, so maybe it was just something that you could get used to
after a while.
Do you remember how they moved text between windows? Is it a cut and
paste operation like MS Windows?
I do have some junk VT-320s that I had
forgotten about. I'll see if one
of them works in the mean time.
Should be OK too, even if you end up working with software that expects
a VT100. But I bet the Portable Pluses are easier to move!
-Frank McConnell