lost esc keys

[mike at SNOWHITE.CIS.UOGUELPH.CA]

rbriber at poly1.nist.gov writes:

>Tim Buxton writes about problems with losing the ESC character
>from the arrow key codes when using a terminal emulator and PC connected
>to his Iris.  We have had the same problem with both vi and emacs
>and PC's hooked to the Iris serial ports.  It can be serious enough
>to make the editors unusable.  We even have been having trouble with
>emacs and a dumb vt100 type terminal connected to ttyd1.  Slowing the
>baud to 4800 seemed to help the terminal but that is not a desirable
>solution.  We are currently running 3.2.0 so I don't know if the
>situation will improve with 3.3.  Putting our PC's on the ethernet
>and using the NCSA package has made the PC's usable but the dumb
>terminal still has problems.

    I've noticed the same kind of thing happening on PIs, 4D50s, and our 240,
on all IRIX versions up to 3.2.1 (which is the latest that we have).  Even our
old 1400 (yes, it still runs, but nobody wants to use it much anymore) had
the same behavior.  What I find perplexing about this habit of dropping <esc>
characters is that it still happens when I use 'rlogin' to get into the SGI
machine.  I thought that the rlogin protocol was supposed to be more reliable
than that.

    Since I usually log on to another machine (a DECstation 2100) and then 
use rlogin to get on to our 240, my work-around has been to add a special
'sgi' keymap in my .Xdefaults file to map the arrow keys to 'hjkl' _before_
they are ever sent across to the 240.  Works fine.  But my innate curiousity
coupled with a large amount of ignorance about IRIX internals (a dangerous 
combination, I admit) causes me to wonder:  why are SGI machines particularly
vulnerable to this problem?  Does anyone else have any clues?

P.S.
    Anyone want to buy a slightly used Iris 1400?  Low MIPS, practically no
MFLOPS, this little baby is perfect for a budding History of Graphics Computing
display.  But wait, that's not all!  If you act now, you also get the original
FLIGHT demo!  Operators are standing by...

So come on, Yeast be nimble,             |
Yeast be quick!                          | Mike Chapman
Yeast please make my head real thick,    | Grab Student, University of Guelph
'cause beer is the student's only friend.| mike at snowhite.cis.uoguelph.ca