DEC VT102

From: Allison J Parent <allisonp_at_world.std.com>
Date: Sun Nov 22 21:43:00 1998

< I have found some real terminals that are very close clones of the VT100
< I picked up a rather nice Trend terminal with an LCD display that clones
< the VT100 almost perfectly, even the setup modes are similar.

True to a point. Long story follows. A friend of mine was the manager
of the Terminal and printers QA group. They tested product to DEC STDs
and also previous products. IE: if a vt100 did it right or wrong they
knew it and the next generation would do that too in vt100 mode. VERY
FEW VT100 closed were better than 95% exact. None of the bugs they had
were subtle, others glaring. Vt100 was the most widely emulated, cloned
and flat out copied terminal made. It's easy to say that as there were
copies of vt100s, the vt220 also emulated vt100, the vt320, 330, 340 and
420 and a bunch of other along the way. then there were the clones of
each one those.

All one ever needed to do a good clone/emulation of vt100 is the user
manual and a vt100 or even better the technical manual. Worse yet the
ANSI terminal spec. Oh, the vt100 was one of the first ANSI terminals
that also did private escapes (dec private) correctly.

< Time to drive up there and use a VT100 keyboard as a LART until they
< finally learn how to count function keys.

It's a very durable keyboard but it would still ruin it to no effect.

< Knowing VT100s, they'd probably work when they arrived ;-)

I've seen boxes that test that theory.

Allison
Received on Sun Nov 22 1998 - 21:43:00 GMT