TRW Acquisitions, VCF

From: Frank McConnell <fmc_at_reanimators.org>
Date: Mon Feb 2 17:35:04 1998

Joe <rigdonj_at_intellistar.net> wrote:
> Thanks Frank. I have two HP 2626s coming. I'd like give them a try just
> for kicks. I understand that they'll support up to four sessions
> simultanously. Seems stange to think of running the Altair via something
> like that.

2626A or 2626W? The latter were intended for use with a word-processing
product for the HP3000, called HPWORD. But that's another story, and
as terminals they don't behave much different from each other.

It's been a while since I did anything with them but I do remember
setting one up to do the multi-session thing just to see how it
worked. Conceptually it goes something like this: the terminal can
have up to four workspaces, where each workspace has a chunk of the
terminal's display buffer memory. You can then split the display into
two or four windows (tiles) into the workspaces and associate devices
with the workspaces (don't remember the details of this). But you
only have two datacomm ports, so I'm not really sure how you can
manage four sessions.

Oh, how well did it work? I seem to remember thinking that it was
cumbersome to use, difficult to switch between workspaces and to
resize them as you were going. But I knew some other people who used
this to move small chunks of text between two connected host
computers, so maybe it was just something that you could get used to
after a while.

> I do have some junk VT-320s that I had forgotten about. I'll see if one
> of them works in the mean time.

Should be OK too, even if you end up working with software that expects
a VT100. But I bet the Portable Pluses are easier to move!

-Frank McConnell
Received on Mon Feb 02 1998 - 17:35:04 GMT