[Info-vax] VMS terminal support

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2012-08-01 13:22:55 +0000, Johnny Billquist said:

> On 2012-08-01 14:53, John E. Malmberg wrote:
>> On 8/1/2012 5:18 AM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>>> 
>>> My point was that there is no response "seven bit". And believe me, I've
>>> read the manuals backwards and forwards plenty of times.
>>> I was curious on how people expected VMS to be able to set eightbit,
>>> based on the information in DA1. Maybe something clever that I had
>>> missed, but based on your responses, as well as the fact that VMS do not
>>> set eightbit even if I have all the capabilities set correctly when I
>>> test seems to prove that VMS does indeed not do this, as it can't.
>> 
>> VMS only seems to be able designed to detect a specific set of VT series
>> terminals that were sold by them or the company that now sells them.  In
>> some cases it can get the geometry of the terminal, in others it can not.
> 
> Well, yes and no. VMS does not detect specific terminals, but only uses 
> the somewhat generic responses from the DA1 escape sequence response. 
> Geometry is basically guessed (well, pretty much assumed) to be 24x80, 
> since almost all text terminals have that geometry.

Because it's a fracking mess.  Duh.

Keep picking at the scab, and you might eventually learn why most folks 
decided to hate on serial comms.

It was a reasonable compromise, err, choice, (many) years ago, but 
outside of a JTAG-type application, it's now a legacy connection.

And for good reason.

Someday, the kids will staring at those giant clunky serial adapters in 
some museum case, with no idea what a mess serial comms was.


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