What's the best RS-232 terminal?

From: Frank McConnell <fmc_at_reanimators.org>
Date: Sun Oct 10 10:34:38 1999

"Mike" <dogas_at_leading.net> wrote:
> Anybody have a favorite? Why?

Several.

If I want a small, light VT100-like terminal that's easy to move and
doesn't take up a lot of space, I use an HP200LX palmtop PC. Why?
Because it's there. I use it heavily anyway, and the serial cable and
adapter bits are usually not too far away if I'm at home or the office.

If I want something with HP terminal emulation or something closer to
a real keyboard, I use one of a couple HP Portable Plus systems that I
have around with WRQ's Reflection in ROM. Guess I could find a copy
of Reflection for DOS and install it on the 200LX but I haven't.

If I want something that looks like a terminal, the HP 2382 is
nice because it's small and light.

If I wanted a printing terminal, I'd probably pull one of the newer,
smaller TI Silent 700s out of storage and use that. Or I have a 3M
Whisper Writer stashed somewhere in the car right now. Just drop in a
roll of FAX paper and I'd be ready to go, and again they're fairly
small and light. Of course FAX paper isn't really good as a long-term
storage medium, you need a plain-paper printer for that.

For just plain neat-o keen-o terminals, there are the HP 264X series
of terminals. They don't emulate DEC VT-anything but who cares, if
you have a 2645 or 2648 (maybe a 2641 too, not sure) there's an 8080
in there and there are games that can be downloaded to run in the
terminal. It's also amusing to note that the display memory isn't
fixed as a number of rows of characters -- the displayed text is
actually stored as a linked list of 16?-byte chunks, so you can have
lots of short lines or fewer long ones, and it's easy to scroll the
display window through memory.

-Frank McConnell
Received on Sun Oct 10 1999 - 10:34:38 BST