IBM 5120 (was Re: My First S-100 System)

From: Eric Smith <eric_at_brouhaha.com>
Date: Sat Oct 12 21:55:00 2002

I wrote about the idea "Otter" <SecretaryBird_at_SoftHome.net> had
of using an IBM 5120 as a terminal:
> But it would make an absolutely *terrible* terminal. It only has 16*64
> video, and unless you got the terminal software with it, you'll have to
> write your own. In BASIC or APL, depending on which model you have. I
> seriously doubt that it can keep up at 9600 bps or faster; as a
> terminal they were normally only used for dialup at 300 bps or slower.

And I forgot to mention the main reason that it makes an awful terminal:
it uses three different character sets internally, NONE of which is
even similar to ASCII (or even EBCDIC).

Of course, a terminal program could translate the character codes for
the matching characters, but just like the ASCII-EBCDIC translation
problem, there are some printing characters and many control characters
that have no equivalents.
Received on Sat Oct 12 2002 - 21:55:00 BST