VP/IX (keyboards, serial terminals)

Brandon S. Allbery allbery at NCoast.ORG
Sat Feb 17 13:08:46 AEST 1990


As quoted from <1519 at krafla.rhi.hi.is> by brb at rhi.hi.is (Bjorn R. Bjornsson):
+---------------
| I personally think VP/ix works rather well on a console, but I have
| quite a few questions and complaints for VP/ix use on serial terminals.
| I almost have the feeling that I must be the only person that has battled
| VP/ix through serial terminals.
+---------------

I used VP/ix daily for a month on an Altos Series 1000 (well, yes, it was the
console---but the Altos 1000 is *not* a PC-compatible, and its console is a
serial port) via a Falco 5000 terminal.  I've not seen any problems beyond
those in getting the order of the escape sequences right to make the Falco
expand the window to 80x25 instead of 80x24....  The 5000 was run in scan-code
mode; I have not yet gathered sufficient masochism to attempt VP/ix on an
ordinary terminal.  [ ;-) ]

+---------------
| 2. Why is there no screen refresh function for PC compatible terminals*?
|    It's present for ASCII terminals but goes away for PC compatible
|    terminals.
|    Why isn't refresh in the VP/ix menu?
| 
|    This is rather important since there seem to be a number of problems
|    in VP/ix video emulation for serial terminals.
+---------------

I suspect that VP/ix terminal descriptions out of the box are about as usable
as termcaps/terminfos right out of the box.  I wrote and debugged the Falco
5000 description myself, and made d*mned sure it *works*.  I suggest you find
someone to write a *correct* description for your terminal.

+---------------
| 3. Why isn't there support for ANSI color escape sequences.  Really?
|    A lot of folks have these (on there PCs for instance).
+---------------

Don't you want ANSI.SYS for this?  Or does VP/ix not handle color at all?  I
can't find out, since the current Altos 1000 version supports neither color
nor graphics.  Nor COM1/2 emulation, which I would have thought to be
relatively easy.  [Had I source, I might attempt it myself.]  [NOTE: the 1000,
not being PC-compatible, has neither memory-mapped console nor scancode
console keyboard nor COM1/COM2.  It comes with 8 serial ports on the mother-
board and slots for two 8-port "SIO" boards or an ACPA (5 serial ports, one
RS-422 multidrop port, and thick and thin Ethernet ports).]

+---------------
| 5. A program to set the BIOS data area keyboard type should come
|    with VP/ix.  A program to synchronize CapsLock, NumLock, ScrollLock
|    for PC-compatible terminals should also come with VP/ix.
+---------------

Not sure I understand this one.  But the Falco has some bugs in this area, and
I'm not sure that any amount of coaxing by VP/ix would help.

++Brandon
-- 
Brandon S. Allbery    allbery at NCoast.ORG, BALLBERY (MCI Mail), ALLBERY (Delphi)
      uunet!cwjcc.cwru.edu!ncoast!allbery ncoast!allbery at cwjcc.cwru.edu



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