Info about the AT&T 620 terminal

[Carl S. Gutekunst]

In article <727 at vsi.UUCP> friedl at vsi.UUCP (Stephen J. Friedl) writes:
>In short, these are pretty sorry terminals.

*SIGH* What I find "sorry" is people who review a product without even having
tried it in its primary operating mode. Yes, it is bitmapped, so the scrolling
is slow. Yes, it does 132 column mode in a peculariar way. (May I see a show
of hands of people who use 132 column mode on *anything?*) And I'd say that
blink and dim attributes would be a little tough to implement on a bitmap.

But it also does 6 windows, arbitrary sized, if you are running the "layers"
software on your host. The window interface is pleasent, easy to use and easy
to learn. It is sufficiently VT-220 compatible that a lot of turnkey applica-
tions that depend on the VT-220 -- Oracle, fer instance -- run perfectly, in
all six windows concurrently. And you can download stuff to the 620, just like
you can to the old 5620; this means troff previewer, pic editor, and lots of
other graphics tools. You can get most of the cut/paste/fonts capability of
the 630 by bringing up myx.

Why were you unhappy with the 615? Ours work fine -- again, in layers mode.

The part that's *really* sorry, though, is AT&T's truly awful support for the
entire 600 family of terminals. They've been making quite a splash at trade
shows now, and even put glossy brochures in _Unix_Review_. What they *don't*
tell you is:

- There are only two computer vendors in the whole world that support layers:
  AT&T and Pyramid. Anywhere else, you have to start from source and install
  it yourself. There are kernel versions for System V and 4.3BSD, and a user-
  level version for 4.nBSD using sockets. This latter version is painful, as
  you lose most of the performance gains you get by having the window manager
  in the terminal. So if you don't have kernel source, life will be rough.

- All of the really fancy software, like editors, compilers, and graphics
  tools, are unsupported software in the UNIX Toolchest. You buy source, cross
  compile, and download. If your host machine is anything other than a System
  V VAX or 3B2, you'll have a little porting work to do. (On a really non-VAX
  architecture like a Pyramid or SPARC, you'll have a lot of porting work.)
  If you have problems, you're on your own. (I've gotten far more help from
  Doug Gwyn that from AT&T, excluding direct support from AT&T Skokie nee
  Teletype Corp.)

The terminals are excellent. The software is very good. The Skokie people did
a terrific job; they worked with us through beta test of all the terminals,
and even sent their lead engineers onsite (California) to fix terminal bugs
that only showed up on the Pyramid. But I think they're getting screwed by the
UNIX folks since a properly supported 620 and 630 is a serious competitor to a
Sun Workstation.

Of course, all the evidence I have at this point is circumstantial, based on
(1) oodles of support from Skokie, (2) endless drivel and foot-dragging from
New Jersey, and (3) all the good software being put in the Unix Toolchest. If
someone from AT&T wants to tell me otherwise, I'm all ears! But don't give me
the "we're too big a company for that" stuff; I know that's true of DEC, which
is organized into lots of different internal units. AT&T, on the other hand,
is highly interwoven, with vigorous political turf battles between units. 

<csg>