[Info-vax] VMS on remote desktops

[FredK]

"smithfarm" <presnypreklad at gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:iapsgi$2k5v$1 at ns.felk.cvut.cz...
>> There was a terminal emulator that was developed by a guy at the same 
>> time I
>> was doing the VWS emulator (which became the basis of DECterm).  His was
>> semi-hobby (think Amiga) at first - and very, very good - we did a lot of
>> one-upsmanship - but he was actually a terminals group guy and a lot 
>> better
>> than me and did things mine didn't need to do.  I believe that this was 
>> what
>> was used on the Multia.  I think I had a copy of it squirreled away a 
>> long,
>> long time ago.
>>
>> Fonts have always been a grey area - because some are/were licenced - so 
>> the
>> font server was always the safest route to providing the fonts rather 
>> than
>> trying to figure out what could be packaged for export off of VMS.  I
>> probably have the fonts I developed myself for the VWS emulator converted 
>> to
>> one of the X11 formats...  but I don't know that the layout of the fonts 
>> are
>> the same - they probably are not.
>>
>
> I don't know if VTstar is the emulator you're talking about but it does 
> exist, and it runs on Vista (and, I assume, on Win7 as well). It comes 
> with fonts, too. I haven't tested it much. Now that I have a VAXstation 
> with an LK401 keyboard, I probably won't be much inclined to, either.
>
> VTstar does have one huge advantage - it's free.
>

I'm an antique.  One of my "claims to fame" was that when the first 
VAXstation and VWS V1.0 came out - I took a basic VT200 emulator and 
replaced the VT100 emulator on VWS.  Fun stuff.  Written in C, loaded into 
paged pool, executed in kernel mode at AST 2.  I took that basic emulator 
through the VT300/400/500 and invented a number of the "workstation" escape 
sequences and lots of fun stuff - my emulator had the first "live" icon that 
was actually the terminal in a 1x1 font... the source for my emulator became 
the base for DECterm.  But "back in the day" - there was still a *real* 
terminals group working on real terminals (trivia note:  The GPX graphics 
option on VAX was designed for a terminal).  There was a terminal architect. 
Formal specifications.  Neat stuff.  The PC wasn't a terminal replacement 
back then - just because of price.  Everyone knew it would kill the VT - but 
believe it or not - terminals were a cash cow and were much cheaper than a 
PC.  If I have the origins of what became VTStar correct - it started out as 
a terminal emulator for an Amiga by one of the guys in that group and 
evolved... I could be wrong - but there aren't a lot of us terminal emulator 
writers.

The multia was a great idea, ahead of it's time, shoehorned into tiny box (I 
still have one tucked in a box).

I knew VTStar had been put onto the freeware CD a long time ago - I am 
surprised and happy to discover via google that the sources appear to not 
have been lost.