old terminal computers.

On Mar 30, 2014, at 21:39 , Derrick Meury <rmx44 at aim.com> wrote: There are exceptions, but most dumb terminals I've encountered have an RS-232-compatible serial port and use the ASCII character set. They can often be used with other makes of computers. Things like graphics characters, cursor movement, full-screen editing, etc. may or may not work in any given combination, depending on whether the computer knows how to control that particular terminal. A lot of terminals were made for generic use with lots of different computers, and those ones will often be configurable to emulate one or more common kinds of terminal. Also, a lot of computers were made to be used with multiple manufacturer's terminals, so they can speak multiple languages. Besides hooking an old terminal to an old computer, it can also come in handy as a user interface and/or debugging output for hardware that has a serial port for control and/or debugging output. For example, you could hook one up to a home-made project based on something like an Arduino board. So even today, a dusty old terminal can have some practical use beyond its collector interest. -- Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net> http://www.nf6x.net/