Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!mips!bridge2!jarthur!mti!dave
From: dave@mti.mti.com (Dave Stuit)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ti
Subject: TELCO problems (was Re: Charter available??)
Summary: Question about TELCO problems and latest version
Keywords: TELCO, terminal emulation, VT100, baud rate, version
Message-ID: <1071@mti.mti.com>
Date: 4 Jul 90 04:38:04 GMT
References: <633@compnect.UUCP> <1990Jun18.134728.4886@ecn.purdue.edu> <3069@psueea.UUCP> <664@compnect.UUCP>
Reply-To: dave@mti.UUCP (Dave Stuit)
Organization: Micro Technology, Anaheim, CA
Lines: 53

>In article <3069@psueea.UUCP>, chuckn@eecs.cs.pdx.edu (Chuck Neal) writes:
>> I have versions of TELCO up to at least ver. 2.3, and every one of them have
>> failed to recognize escape sequences in every emulation mode.  Has this problem
>> been fixed?  Or do you use something else for editing and reading news?

I too have had problems with TELCO.  First, I'll note that I haven't used it
in about two years; my TI (a 4A) has been in storage and I was just thinking
of retrieving it.  So some of the problems may have been overcome already.
(Unfortunately, I don't have the disk or docs handy, so I can't say what
version I was using before.)

My use of TELCO in the past has been mainly for access to UNIX systems --
i.e., strictly as a terminal emulator.  The difficulties I had fall into two
categories:

(1) At high baud rates I lost characters.  As I backed off on the baud rate,
    things improved around 2400 and most problems went away by 1200, if i
    recall correctly.  I realize that I can't expect too much out of a 4A,
    and any performance improvements are likely to be small.  I'd like to
    hear about experiences with the latest version of TELCO on a 4A.

(2) Like Chuck, I've found the emulations to be incomplete.  Of course, the
    docs didn't advertise 100% emulations.  The completeness and accuracy of
    the emulations is not too big a deal to me, as I can always handcraft my
    own termcap entries.  The problem I had was missing functions.  Perhaps
    the biggest omission I found was that none of the emulations supported
    the line insert/delete capabilities of the emulated terminals.
    Applications on the host systems could emulate these functions by
    redrawing the screen from the cursor to the bottom.  But this made it
    painful to use visual editors such as emacs, especially at the low baud
    rates supported.  

I don't mean to flame TELCO by any means.  My compliments go out to Charles
Earl (and to Paul Charlton for FasTerm) for developing some great
applications.

What I'm looking to find out is how TELCO might have been improved in the
past few years.  Also, what's the current status of FasTerm?  (I switched to
TELCO because its limited vt100 terminal emulation met a need I had at the
time, but that's no longer an issue.)

In article <664@compnect.UUCP> dave@compnect.UUCP (Dave Ratcliffe) writes:
>Chuck, I'm using 2.3 with vt52 under uPort 386 Unix. For reading news I
>use vnews (from the 2.11 BNEWS distribution) and my global editor is
>MicroEMACS 3.9. Running Telco on a Geneve 9640 [...]

Maybe the key to your success is the Geneve.  How do the 4A and Geneve
implementations of TELCO differ?

--dave
-- 
Dave Stuit		( dave@mti.com  or  uunet!mti!dave )
Micro Technology, 5065 E. Hunter Ave., Anaheim, CA  92807  (714)693-2396