VT100 under SIMH

From: Zane H. Healy <healyzh_at_aracnet.com>
Date: Wed Sep 1 13:12:00 2004

> The point of my exercise was to verify that a real VT100 would
> perform hooked up to OS X through a USB serial adapter. [It worked
> fine.] That it works as expected with SIMH is merely icing and
> perhaps useful for others to know.

Now I'm going to be tempted to hook a VT420 up to my G5 2x2 :^)

> The stock Terminal application in OS X does not do a complete or
> satisfactory VT100 emulation, in my book. There are indeed other
> emulators that may or may not do the desired job.

Terminal.app is a lot better than it used to be. The main problem I see is
that trying to remap the keys is a total nightmare, and I've yet to figure
out how to get the top row of the keypad remapped, which makes it worthless
to me. The one possitive note, is it handles the double-height fonts
correctly! If they'd get keyboard remapping improved, I think it could
be just what I need.

I've been threatening to buy a 3rd party terminal emulator for Mac OS X, but
I simply can't find one that works they way I want. Most don't handle the
double-height fonts correctly, and their keyboard support is spotty. Then
there is the whole nightmarish mess of thier configuration menues.

At this point I used a hacked .Xmodmap with xterm, but that means the fonts
aren't quite right. Still at least the keyboard works the way I expect when
I'm logged into OpenVMS (works good for PDP-10 and PDP-11 OS's as well).

                        Zane
Received on Wed Sep 01 2004 - 13:12:00 BST