modern serial terminal

Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2007 12:55:10 -0500 From: Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> Subject: Re: modern serial terminal On Nov 4, 2007, at 12:39 PM, woodelf wrote: ----------------- A moot distinction; what's the difference? If you must have a terminal box instead of just running your vintage hardware from the computer on your desk, just take an old laptop, remove the (perhaps broken) display, stick a USB or Flash disk in it to boot and run emulation S/W from, plug in your keyboard, display and RS-232 cable and how's that different in any real sense from a fancy terminal? CPU, EEPROM, RAM and I/O; sounds the same to me, and probably free... Except of course for the added features of programmability, extra memory, up/download and text capture capability, network access, RS-232<>Internet bridge capability, printer & USB ports, alternate keyboard, modem, etc. I've got a dozen terminals here gathering dust; my small 486 Compaq laptop is portable and way more convenient. The only terminal I have kept on my desk is a Cromemco C-5 to run one particular HD diagnostic program because AFAIK there isn't an emulator for Cromemco 3101-style terminals, but a couple of us are working on it so I hope to be able to retire that one as well soon. I have to admit that using an XT doesn't make much sense to me either though; why would anyone... (oh, oh, starting to sound like Tony...) If you insist, I have a couple of 6502-based Linger 65/9028VT terminal boards (abt 6"x4", Heath/Televideo/Hazeltine/ANSI etc.) and also a bunch of 8631/8563-based Crestline CT-128 colour terminals in enclosures (abt 8"x5"x2", Intecolor, VGA/composite); the only catch is that there's no source available for the EPROMs AFAIK (although there _might_ be). mike