Anybody have a favorite? Why?
My favorites are: Heath H-19, DEC VT-52, and DEC VT-220.
Unfavorites are:
- VT-100. It just doesn't have enough compute power. Since I'm a CP/M
WordStar fanatic, requiring XON/XOFF on the console port because the
terminal is underpowered is very annoying (^Q and ^S are very important
keys in WordStarland).
- Anything by Televideo. Televideo keyboards and I don't get along. The
touch is too heavy. I press CONTROL [ for escape because I use so many
different keyboards and that moves around less than the ESC key, but the
Televideo terminals insist on sending ^] no matter how I'm holding the
shift key down.
- Terminal emulators running on PCs. Seems like there's always some
annoying quirk they get wrong. For example, MS-DOS KERMIT didn't play
nice with K52 on RT-11 because K52 likes to move the cursor to the 25th
line if it decides not to move the cursor at all; a real VT-52 doesn't
have a 25th line, but KERMIT does. Another example: PCCONS under NetBSD
goes into graphics mode the first time I telnet into a VMS machine to
read my mail. I don't know why.
Roger Ivie
ivie(a)cc.usu.edu