[Info-vax] VAXStation 4000/60 - some questions

[commodorejohn]

On Jan 31, 7:39 am, Stephen Hoffman <seaoh... at hoffmanlabs.invalid>
wrote:
> Terms:
>
> - Glass TTY.  The blue screen environment, when DECwindows is not
> running.  Dumb as a post.
>
> - DECterm.  The terminal emulator present in DECwindows.  Can emulate a VT100
>
> - Console.  The graphics device or serial device where the console can
> display and chat.
>
> - Serial Console or Alternate Console.  The console, configured to use
> the serial line.  Preferable to the Glass TTY in most cases,
> particularly when no VT52 emulation is available.

> The mid-vintage versions of the OpenVMS Alpha console terminal driver
> OPA0: acquired the ability to emulate a VT52; the glass TTY and the
> graphics controllers do not provide VT100 compatibility on VAX, Alpha
> or Itanium.
Yeah, I shoulda been a little clearer on this. I'm referring to the
text mode of the graphics board (the 1280x1024 256-color single-
monitor one,) as run from the VMS command line. I do have terminals I
could use over the serial port, I'd just like to be able to use the
one that already exists in the machine if possible. The exact nature
of the problem is that I tried to start up EVE/TPU, but it was
complaining because it didn't know what kind of terminal it was
talking to. If the built-in text mode really is a dumb terminal,
though, I suppose it's pointless trying to get a screen editor working
on it in the first place, and I'll just leave off with that until I
get DECWindows up and running. (VT52 compatibility would be better
than nothing, but it looks from the EVE manual like it basically
expects a VT100.)

> As for the blue glass TTY display, most[1] folks with a workstation
> will also configure DECwindows, as this provides workstation-style
> graphics.  DECwindows is the OpenVMS version of the X Window system.
> DECwindows provides various applications including a terminal emulator
> known as DECterm, and the X libraries and programming interfaces.  On
> VAX, DECwindows was installed in two hunks, the system-specific
> portions could be selected and installed with most any recent versions
> of OpenVMS, and the seperately-installed DECwindows system-independent
> bits, that were installed via the DECwindows layered product kit.
Yeah, I'm in the middle of working on that; I got the installation kit
onto the machine, but it's complaining that the kit is "too large for
the application's buffer." I've seen advice elsewhere that this may
stem from my having unzipped it prior to copying rather than directly
on the VAX, so I've gotta burn a new CD with the ZIP archive and give
that a shot.