From: bill@Celestial.COM (Bill Campbell)
Newsgroups: comp.terminals,comp.unix.sysv386,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Re: Wyse160 vs IBMPC+Kermit
Date: 9 Apr 92 16:27:08 GMT
Organization: Celestial Software, Mercer Island, WA

In <1992Apr4.165332.18131@bilver.uucp> bill@bilver.uucp (Bill Vermillion) writes:

>In article <29D69200.6E33@telly.on.ca> evan@telly.on.ca (Evan Leibovitch) writes:
>>Not just a Wyse 160, really, but any of the current crop of ASCII terminals.

>>......deleted
>>Given this price difference, what advantages does the terminal have
>>over the PC equipped with a current version of MS-DOS Kermit?

>Biggest difference I have seen is speed and quality of text
>displays.

>Most of the PC terminal program (I have not tried the MS-DOS
>Kermit) are slow compared to a terminal.   Even on high speed

I regularly run MS-Kermit 3.10 on 16Mhz 386SX systems (Tandy
4016SX) at 38.4 with excellent results.  Kermit even comes with
key-definitions that work well with WordPerfect, and that takes
some doing.

>serial boards, I can't seem to get the PC terminal emulations,
>(the ones I need must support tranparent printing - while too

Kermit supports transparent printing also.  It used a VT220
emulation using ESC[4i, ESC[5i for printer controls which doesn't
conflict with printer control codes as the Wyse 60's native codes
do (attempting to change to certain pitches on on Okidata printer
turns transparent print off).

>........
>And I have seen one terminal that lets you cut and paste
>between the dual sessions on two separate serial links.

There's even an ascii windowing standard in the works with a few
terminal shipping to meet the standard.  Some even have mouse
support.

>The places where PC's work well are when you need multiple
>links to variant systems.   At one site we use PC's so that
>there can be a Novell connection, a polled mainframe
>connection, and an  ASCII link to the Unix box.

This is particularly true when using programs like JSB Multiview
which allows multiple logins, each in it's own Win3 window.  You
can cut and paste between the windows.

On the other hand, I use ascii terminals to log in to multiple
TCP/IP hosts (mine are all Xenix/UNIX) using a Chase Research
terminal server.  Each serial port can have 4 connections open at
any time using rlogin or telnet to the hosts.  I tend to use the
terminal servers in place of multi-port boards because they
simplify the wiring and give me more flexibility, particularly
with multiple systems.  They also cut down the number of drivers,
IRQs, BIOS addresses...

>If your MS-DOS kermit does all things well, then you are okay.
>But if you need things it doesn't handle well, then the
>communications programs must be added into the cost.  And some
>of them can be a significant expense.

And pretty ridiculous in their behaviour.  The last time I tried
Procomm it didn't map the function keys rationally (IMHO).  F1
would take me to some Procomm menu instead of sending a code to
the host.

Bill
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