Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!lll-crg!lll-lcc!pyramid!csg From: csg@pyramid.UUCP (Carl S. Gutekunst) Newsgroups: comp.terminals Subject: Re: Brain-damaged Terminal Contest Message-ID: <1075@pyramid.UUCP> Date: Thu, 20-Nov-86 22:10:35 EST Article-I.D.: pyramid.1075 Posted: Thu Nov 20 22:10:35 1986 Date-Received: Fri, 21-Nov-86 01:56:30 EST References: <1438@kitty.UUCP> <1140@mordred.cs.purdue.edu> Reply-To: csg@pyramid.UUCP (Carl S. Gutekunst) Organization: Pyramid Technology Corp., Mountain View, CA Lines: 39 Keywords: brain-damage, video display terminals, all-time worst In article <1140@mordred.cs.purdue.edu> avr@mordred.cs.purdue.edu (Andrew V. Royappa) writes: > Don't know about Most brain-damaged, but the BLIT (dmd 5620, AKA >Bell Labs Intelligent Terminal (I think) -- it should stand for BLAT -- >Bell Labs Annoying Terminal). The problems you mention are all characteristics of the DMD's "standalone" mode, which is a stripped-down terminal emulator intended ONLY for the purpose of booting into something else. Try running the layers window manager, which is the terminal's normal operating mode, and all your problems will magically go away. (It has inverse video, underlines, proper handling of ^S/^Q, and no overrun problems.) As it happens, Teletype did take enough flak for the braindamage in the stand- alone mode that they fixed all these problems anyway, about two years ago. Ask someone to get you a current set of EPROMs for your terminal. > Then again, there are regent100s. Ah, yes. The LOCAL key transmits to the host. Escape sequences turn into caps lock if you happen to be holding down the SHIFT key when they arrive. No CAPS LOCK key to undo the damage. The character generator PROM uses variable width characters, but displays them fixed width, making many character combinations unreadable. Sloppy configuration of the display controller limits descenders. The up and down arrow keys echo locally *and* transmit, but the left and right arrows only transmit. Any characters that arrive while local echoing is in progress cause the local echo be repeated anywhere from 10 to 30 times. HOME is the lower left corner. The backarrow key sends a ^U. There is no back space key, and you have to shift to get a DEL. They RETURN key on the numeric keypad sends a comma. The power-on self-test clears the screen to NULs instead of blanks, and sends a curious encoded string back to the host. ^X causes the terminal to go into power-on self-test. On top of all this, it has the usual annoying quirks of terminals that use Intel display controllers: magic cookie attributes that make the whole screen flash when they're used, and curious "graphics." *NOW* we're talking serious braindamage. :-)