Recommended terminal emulation software to access Z-System?

[tingo]

I have been testing my P112 with the Z-system boot floppy for now (the machine is complete, but putting it into a case and adding a floppy drive 2 remains). I'm using gtkterm and a usb-to-serial adapter from my laptop to access the P112. When running tcselect, I selected vt100. But I don't think gtkterm is fully vt100-compliant, because some programs (z-edit for example) complains about missing capabilities and refuses to start.
What terminal emulator programs are recommended?

 

[pjh]

Google RealTerm and try it. It not only emulates a serial terminal but offers diagnostics of the signal lines if necesssary.

Phillip

 

[tesseract]

You do not say so specifically but I infer from your message that you are running linux and you are looking for a suitable terminal emulator for that platform.

I'm using minicom on three versions of linux. It emulates a VT102 or an ANSI terminal. It was installed automatically under Knoppix 7.2 but under Mint 13 I installed it from the repository. You may also need setserial to initialise your communications ports. I certainly did because none of my modern computers has a serial port so I bought a PCMCIA gizmo with two serial connections and used setserial to configure them.

 

[tingo]

Ah yes, sorry about that: I'm using my Linux laptop...
For some reason I've never felt comfortable with minicom, but thanks for the advice.

In case anyone wants to know, I am currently using kermit (ckermit) under Xubuntu to access my P112. So far, it works nicely.

 

[Oscar]

Hi,

I recently stumbled upon Qodem, a modern remake of QModem. Recommended, because of its vintage feel - and also because it does VT-52 as well as VT-100.

Regards,

Oscar.

 

[Chuck(G)]

It's funny--back in the heyday of the Z80, the most common terminal emulation used to be LSI ADM-3A or similar proprietary protocols. That included "simulated terminals" such as implemented in the Kaypro.

VT100/ANSI terminals for use on 8-bit systems were rather uncommon--and probably unnecessary due to the complexity of full VT100 feature implementation (e.g. double-high or double-wide characters). VT100-style terminals were also significantly more expensive than, say, a Wyse WY-50.

Consider also, that there's some additional overhead in using ANSI/VT100 escape sequences. The program must perform a binary-to-decimal conversion to supply cursor positioning information, for example.

By the time of the IBM PC, ANSI terminal emulation had become the more-or-less common protocol.

 

[tingo]

@Oscar - thanks, I didn't know about Qodem. It looks interesting, I must play with it someday.