Terminal Emulator

Ali cctalk at ibm51xx.net
Sat Oct 2 21:54:02 CDT 2021


> I had mentioned SecureCRT, it is my daily use ssh client. But if we
> want to focus on more vintage software, my favorite terminal emulator
> is ProComm Plus, made by Datastorm. As it happens, the two original
> authors/owners wrote it while living in my area (university). I grew up
> using that one, and it is still installed on my move-around-rack-on-
> wheels system that provides services to other machines in the
> collection (PUTR, etc).
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datastorm_Technologies


Procomm was the first terminal program I used that was easy to understand and work with. Of course I was using it mainly to dial BBSes at the time. I stayed with it for a few iterations until I switched over to Telix and finally Terminate (interestingly Terminate's web site forwards to protonmail.com now). There was also Windows version of Procomm which was slower and had more bloatware features while being less reliable. The last probably had to do more with the HW then the SW though. Downloading under windows while multitasking was always a crap shoot! Plus you could not add more protocols easily (e.g. HSLink) since most protocols were written for DOS and not a windows environment.

With windows I actually started using ZOC which seemed to run better and more reliably. It was great for a bit but once the internet became a "thing" I walked away from most of the terminal programs.

SecureCRT is great and very full featured. I use a very much older cousin called CRT with my headless mini Linux server. Although I have also used it for such mundane tasks as accessing APC UPS consoles and Netgear equipment, and even dialing a BBS. It does support color, but at least for me, it has never been very accurate.

-Ali



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