12 Oct
2002
12 Oct
'02
10:25 p.m.
On 12 Oct 2002 at 19:57, Eric Smith wrote:
I wrote about the idea "Otter"
<SecretaryBird(a)SoftHome.net> had
of using an IBM 5120 as a terminal:
Thanks for the heads-up. The 5120 is hereby vetoed as a candidate
for the Cromemco terminal. :) I still plan on getting her connected
to my network somehow...eventually...one of these days.
One of our Kaypro II systems may serve as the Cromemco's console
instead. Or, even though it may cause a loss of geek points; I might
just build a very minimalist 386 or 486 system from spare parts I
have lying about here, set it up with FreeDOS or MINIX, and make that
the console. Either of these possibilities would still be only
temporary, and would eventually be replaced with a genuine Cromemco
Smart Terminal. :)
-- Scarletdown
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.