19 May
2000
19 May
'00
1:03 p.m.
Well, Allison, you're right about the Esprit,
since it didn't come around
until the very late '70's, but it was my choice at that time because (1)
I know, I worked for Haziltine and was part of manufacturing engineering
for terminals then.
compatibility issues under CP/M. Various software
packages had to be
configured specifically for whichever terminal was in use, and being "close"
generally led to trouble.
I know... However, Vt52 was the safest of the lot for emulation as it
was so minimal and widely used/copied. The key was having screen clear,
clear to end of line and gotoxy all were trivial.
The early video boards with 16 lines of 64 characters
weren't supported by
most software vendors at the time. Only after the popularity of the TRS-80
(1978) became a factor did 16x64 become useable with standard CP/M systems
and software. Of course, one could write one's own drivers, but that was
not a popular solution for most users.
Actually 72 lines was more defacto as that was TTY.
Who built that VDM-1? Was that not a part of some
vendor's "set" of boards?
Processor Technology, you could buy it alone and they had other boards as
well all very good. I bought mine(still have it) for the Altair in early
'76 as TTY was noisy and often slow for debugging/editing.
Allison