Re: Any faithful VT100 Emulators?

[Sam O'nella via cctalk]

This had kept the prices on that model a bit higher. The serial port while 
smaller is easy to hack a cable for most connections you need. I guess it's not 
that way for the other models? I hear it very often for the lx-200 pretty 
exclusively.
 Original message From: Robert Feldman via cctalk 
<cctalk@classiccmp.org> Date: 3/23/17  11:20 AM  (GMT-06:00) To: 
cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: Re: Any faithful VT100 Emulators? 
Warren Toomey wrote:
> are there any _good_ VT100 terminal emulators


Another alternative is to get a used HP LX 200 palmtop computer. Its DataComm 
program has a good VT100 mode.


Bob

Re: Any faithful VT100 Emulators?

[Robert Feldman via cctalk]

Warren Toomey wrote:
> are there any _good_ VT100 terminal emulators


Another alternative is to get a used HP LX 200 palmtop computer. Its DataComm 
program has a good VT100 mode.


Bob

Re: Any faithful VT100 Emulators?

[John H. Reinhardt via cctalk]

On 3/22/2017 9:23 AM, Ethan Dicks via cctalk wrote:

I'm following this thread because I too want a decent terminal
emulator that works with a variety of vintage text editors (that seems
to be the torture test) but for Linux or OS X.  Putty seems to be a
repeat suggestion but it's not for my platforms.

-ethan



On OS X 10.9 and 10.11 I've had pretty good results from a terminal emulator called 
Zoc from Em-Tec   It's a guy in Germany 
and he has a couple products, but I think ZOC is his main thing.  It runs on both 
Windows and OS X.  It's not free ($79.99) but, for me it was better than anything 
else.  I tried the current Ericon products for the Mac, and they aren't free either 
and are a considerable bit more expensive and WAY slower.  ZOC is pretty fast.  I 
also used ITerm/iTerm2 but neither of them could do serial ports.  ZOC can talk to 
systems using many protocols, serial included.

The author is good at communication and willing to discuss problems and fixes.  
I talked to him initially about some of the keyboard mapping and he was very 
good about it.

For Linux I've always heard use xterm (Mac, too but I didn't want to run X 
windows if I didn't have to).

John H. Reinhardt

RE: Any faithful VT100 Emulators?

[Jay West via cctalk]

Ethan wrote...

-

I'm following this thread because I too want a decent terminal emulator that
works with a variety of vintage text editors (that seems to be the torture
test) but for Linux or OS X.  Putty seems to be a repeat suggestion but it's
not for my platforms.

--

The most faithful vt100 emulation I've seen myself (not that I've done a big
study or anything) is SecureCRT from Van Dyke. It is a commercial product,
but about the only commercial product I've decided is worth the cost. I use
it daily and pay for upgrades and new releases gladly.

 

I do know that they came out with a version for OSX a while back. I expect
that to be robust. There is a version for Linux, never tried that as I'm a
FreeBSD zealot. There is also an iphone/ipad app by secureCRT and I've used
it in a few pinches but never on a classic system. And the company has
actually heard of VMS ;)

 

Their support is off-the-charts. On more than one occasion I've emailed them
asking for this or that... and several times I've seen it implemented on the
next release. They actively listen and implement.

 

If the linux and OSX and app versions are as good as the windows one... it's
worth a shot.

 

J

 

Re: Any faithful VT100 Emulators?

[John Wilson via cctalk]

On Wed, Mar 22, 2017 at 09:23:52AM -0400, Ethan Dicks via cctalk wrote:
>Putty seems to be a
>repeat suggestion but it's not for my platforms.

PuTTY interprets ESC [?7l in a weirdly wrong way -- instead of disabling
autowrap (which is already a half-documented feature that's implemented
differently on the VT100, VT101, and VT102, likely by accident), it makes
autowrap work in a different, incorrect way.  Editors trip over that since
they can't be afraid to use column 80.

John Wilson
D Bit

Re: Any faithful VT100 Emulators?

[Ethan Dicks via cctalk]

On Wed, Mar 22, 2017 at 9:29 AM, Lars Brinkhoff  wrote:
> Ethan Dicks wrote:
>> Somewhere around 2004, I was setting up klh10.  I found that xterm did
>> not allow me to run emacs successfully.
>
> I have successfullyl run xterm in VT52 mode with ITS Emacs.

I must confess I did not attempt VT52 mode with Emacs.  In another
world, I did find that the VT220 implementation of VT52 mode was not
kind to the VTEDIT TECO macro on OS/8 (I ended up with a real VT52 so
I "solved" that problem).

-ethan

Re: Any faithful VT100 Emulators?

[Lars Brinkhoff via cctalk]

Ethan Dicks wrote:
> Somewhere around 2004, I was setting up klh10.  I found that xterm did
> not allow me to run emacs successfully.

I have successfullyl run xterm in VT52 mode with ITS Emacs.

Re: Any faithful VT100 Emulators?

[Ethan Dicks via cctalk]

On Wed, Mar 22, 2017 at 9:05 AM, Tor Arntsen via cctalk
 wrote:
> xterm never gives me any problems. But the default terminal emulators
> of Gnome or KDE have some issues in my experience...

Somewhere around 2004, I was setting up klh10.  I found that xterm did
not allow me to run emacs successfully.  I had dumb terminals on hand,
so I plugged a vt420 into my serial port, ran a getty, logged in, ran
klh10 from there and emacs loved it.

I'm following this thread because I too want a decent terminal
emulator that works with a variety of vintage text editors (that seems
to be the torture test) but for Linux or OS X.  Putty seems to be a
repeat suggestion but it's not for my platforms.

-ethan

Re: Any faithful VT100 Emulators?

[Tor Arntsen via cctalk]

On 22 March 2017 at 02:02, Warren Toomey via cctalk
 wrote:

> Which raises the question, are there any _good_ VT100 terminal
> emulators, especially for Linux? For any other platforms?

xterm never gives me any problems. But the default terminal emulators
of Gnome or KDE have some issues in my experience. xterm is always
buried in the system somewhere though, and it works. I use it e.g. for
accessing my old minicomputer which has a VT100 setting.

Re: Any faithful VT100 Emulators?

[Paul Koning via cctalk]

> On Mar 22, 2017, at 7:11 AM, Peter Coghlan via cctalk  
> wrote:
> ...
> I've used Putty to connect to a VMS system to run TPU (which I think LSE is
> a thinly disguised variant of) and I have regularly come across an irritating
> bug which messes up full screen editing when the on-screen cursor seems to get
> out of step with the text that is actually getting changed, or something like
> that anyway.  Scrolling down the file and scrolling back up to the point where
> changes were made reveals that the changes actually made were not what it
> looked like was changed on the screen.

I don't remember how VMS describes terminal types, but here's one possible 
issue.  VT100 is fairly different from VT101/102, and if the emulator is 
emulating a VT100 while the application has been told it has a VT102, things 
are likely to be problematic.  I vaguely remember that VT100 lacks the insert 
operations, and if the program tries to use those when they aren't there, that 
would certainly cause the sort of problems you mentioned.

paul

RE: Any faithful VT100 Emulators?

[Peter Coghlan via cctalk]

>
> 
> From: cctalk [cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] on behalf of Warren Toomey via 
> cctalk [cctalk@classiccmp.org]
> Sent: Tuesday, March 21, 2017 9:02 PM
> To: cctalk@classiccmp.org
> Subject: Any faithful VT100 Emulators?
>
> OK, so I don't have a real VT100, so I'm accessing an old 4.3BSD system
> with xterm and LXTerminal terminal emulators on Linux. Last night, for a
> laugh, I ran vttest from the 1980s and the terminal emulators performed
> woefully.
>
> Which raises the question, are there any _good_ VT100 terminal
> emulators, especially for Linux? For any other platforms?
> 
> Cheers, Warren
>
> __
>
> I've never formally tested it but people say Putty is very good.  I have even
> heard VMS users say it works with LSE.  ANd then, if you have MSDOS
> laying around somewhere there is MSKermit which had to be the best I
> ever saw.
>
> bill

I've used Putty to connect to a VMS system to run TPU (which I think LSE is
a thinly disguised variant of) and I have regularly come across an irritating
bug which messes up full screen editing when the on-screen cursor seems to get
out of step with the text that is actually getting changed, or something like
that anyway.  Scrolling down the file and scrolling back up to the point where
changes were made reveals that the changes actually made were not what it
looked like was changed on the screen.

Having said that Putty is way better than any of the Microsoft telnet or
Hyperterminal offerings which are completely unusable with TPU or anything else
that attempts to make use of a scrolling region (vi maybe? - I don't know).

I haven't used MSKermit for donkeys years but as far as I recall, the emulation 
was very good with the exception of stuff like double height characters and
smooth scroll not being implemented which did not affect functionality in the
way that the Putty bug does.  I haven't used it but I think there were very
good reports about the terminal emulation in Kermit 95.

I can't recall noticing any problems with the terminal emulation when using
whatever telnet client comes with relatively current Apple Mac and Linux
systems in whatever terminal environment they provide (xterm maybe?), nor
the Multinet telnet client on VMS when running it in a DECterm or a real VT
terminal.

I also agree with John Wilson's take on VTTEST being well off the mark.

Regards,
Peter Coghlan.

Re: Any faithful VT100 Emulators?

[Lars Brinkhoff via cctalk]

Warren Toomey wrote:
> are there any _good_ VT100 terminal emulators

This emulates the 8080 and runs off ROMs, if you want that kind of
accuracy:

https://github.com/phooky/VT100-Hax

RE: Any faithful VT100 Emulators?

[Bill Gunshannon via cctalk]

From: cctalk [cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] on behalf of Warren Toomey via 
cctalk [cctalk@classiccmp.org]
Sent: Tuesday, March 21, 2017 9:02 PM
To: cctalk@classiccmp.org
Subject: Any faithful VT100 Emulators?

OK, so I don't have a real VT100, so I'm accessing an old 4.3BSD system
with xterm and LXTerminal terminal emulators on Linux. Last night, for a
laugh, I ran vttest from the 1980s and the terminal emulators performed
woefully.

Which raises the question, are there any _good_ VT100 terminal
emulators, especially for Linux? For any other platforms?

Cheers, Warren

__

I've never formally tested it but people say Putty is very good.  I have even
heard VMS users say it works with LSE.  ANd then, if you have MSDOS
laying around somewhere there is MSKermit which had to be the best I
ever saw.

bill

Re: Any faithful VT100 Emulators?

[John Wilson via cctalk]

On Wed, Mar 22, 2017 at 11:02:58AM +1000, Warren Toomey via cctalk wrote:
>OK, so I don't have a real VT100, so I'm accessing an old 4.3BSD system
>with xterm and LXTerminal terminal emulators on Linux. Last night, for a
>laugh, I ran vttest from the 1980s and the terminal emulators performed
>woefully.
>
>Which raises the question, are there any _good_ VT100 terminal
>emulators, especially for Linux? For any other platforms?

If I do say so myself, the one in E11 is very true.  Its VT100, VT101,
and VT102 emulations "fail" VTTEST in exactly the same ways that the real
VT100, VT101, and VT102 do (point is:  VTTEST is a fool's paradise, and
anything which 100% passes it is *definitely* not 100% VT100-compatible).

The best E11 flavors for the VT100 emulation are for Windows and OS/2
(those give you pretty much *everything*, including smooth-scroll and blink
and true double-size characters and the correct VT100 font and the SET-UP 0
screen scramble).  DOS and stand-alone give you a good text-mode approximation
(minus smooth scroll, and blink isn't quite accurate, and the double-size
characters reassign unused char-gen cells until they run out and then it
starts to look like a ransom note), but the Linux version works only on
text consoles (mainly because I haven't found a linker that builds from
OMF386 .OBJ files yet also handles ELF imports correctly, so I can't build
it against X).

Currently there's no free-standing version (it exists only built into E11),
which I've been meaning to deal with for centuries (and I'm currently --
as in for the past week -- working on a version for XMOS microcontrollers
as part of my "SchmELF" CDP1802 project), but meanwhile if you go here:

www.dbit.com/pub/e11/

... and grab the "vt100.ini" and "vt100.pdp" files, that gives you a simple
loopback program which makes the E11 VT100 console act as a terminal
connected to whatever's assigned to TT1: (a serial port or "TELCLIENT:"
Telnet client are the most useful -- which currently rules out OS/2 I
guess).

John Wilson
D Bit

Any faithful VT100 Emulators?

[Warren Toomey via cctalk]

OK, so I don't have a real VT100, so I'm accessing an old 4.3BSD system
with xterm and LXTerminal terminal emulators on Linux. Last night, for a
laugh, I ran vttest from the 1980s and the terminal emulators performed
woefully.

Which raises the question, are there any _good_ VT100 terminal
emulators, especially for Linux? For any other platforms?

Cheers, Warren