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Terminal emulator for Linux

durgadas311 said:
termcap/terminfo is used to tell Unix/Linux programs how to communicate to a physical terminal connected to Unix/Linux. That is *not* terminal emulation. If you have a Wyse 50 (do any still exist?) connected to your PC then that might help. But, I took your original request to be that you have some legacy application(s) running on vintage hardware that emits Wyse 50 ESC codes and you need some way to handle those on Linux. for that you need a Wyse 50 *terminal emulation*, not Wyse 50 termcap/terminfo.

To answer your question, even though I don't think it is what you want, on my system the terminfo files are part of the package "ncurses-term", which you would need to install. Again, I don't believe this is what you need.
Click to expand...

Minicom, however, is a terminal emulator and terminfo tells it what terminal to emulate. See here and here.
 
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Chuck(G) said:
Minicom, however, is a terminal emulator and terminfo tells it what terminal to emulate. See here and here.
Click to expand...

The text in those two links appears to say exactly what I said. The vintage machine that talks to minicom must send vt100 codes. If you connect a Wyse terminal as the stdio of minicom, the machine still has to send vt100 codes. minicom is translating vt100 codes into Wyse code via termcap/terminfo, but it is not emulating a Wyse terminal.
 
curbie said:
Doug, some of these are printer drivers.

AB62 TDV 4 AB62A TDV 5 AB62X TDV 4 ADOBE TDV 1
ALPHA TDV 3 ALPHAA TDV 4 AM6X TDV 3 AM60 TDV 3
AM62 TDV 3 AM62A TDV 3 AM62AB TDV 4 AM62C TDV 4
AM62CG TDV 4 AM62F TDV 4 AM62GF TDV 4 AM62GM TDV 4
AM62M TDV 4 AM62N TDV 4 AM65 TDV 4 AM65A TDV 4
AM65AX TDV 4 AM65EX TDV 4 AM7X TDV 3 AM70 TDV 3
AM70AW TDV 3 AM70E TDV 3 AM70EG TDV 3 AM70EW TDV 4
AM70G TDV 3 AM70GW TDV 4 AM72 TDV 4 AM72A TDV 4
AM75 TDV 4 AM75EX TDV 4 AM75G TDV 4 AM75GX TDV 4
A70EGW TDV 4 DIABLO TDV 1 FLACOL TDV 7 FLIP TDV 1
FLPA60 TDV 5 FLPA62 TDV 5 FLPCOL TDV 6 FLPCOM TDV 6
FLPW50 TDV 6 FLP210 TDV 6 FLP62 TDV 6 FLP62A TDV 6
FLP62B TDV 6 FLP62D TDV 6 FLP62X TDV 6 FLP65A TDV 6
FLP925 TDV 5 FLP950 TDV 6 FLWCOL TDV 6 FLW62A TDV 6
FPCCOL TDV 8 FWSCOL TDV 8 FWYCOL TDV 7 F72COL TDV 7
HPJET7 TDV 1 HPJET8 TDV 1 LASWRT TDV 1 MACCOL TDV 9
SOROC TDV 2 SOR135 TDV 3 TELTYP TDV 1 TK4105 TDV 4
TVI925 TDV 2 T1340 TDV 1 T1350 TDV 1 T950 TDV 3
WYSE TDV 4 WY50 TDV 3
Click to expand...

Yes, some of those seem to be printers. The list of terminals seems rather small and esoteric. I don't recognize many of them. I'm guessing this machine had a rather narrow customer base, or at least had a narrow list of supported peripherals. That's not uncommon, depending on the era. Another option would be to "write" a TDV for vt100 and use it. Is there any information on how to do that for this machine? I suspect one could "disassemble" a TDV against a know terminal type and get some idea of how to create one.
 
durgadas311 said:
The text in those two links appears to say exactly what I said. The vintage machine that talks to minicom must send vt100 codes. If you connect a Wyse terminal as the stdio of minicom, the machine still has to send vt100 codes. minicom is translating vt100 codes into Wyse code via termcap/terminfo, but it is not emulating a Wyse terminal.
Click to expand...

Absolutely correct--I stand corrected. I'll see if there are any Linux terminal emulators around. Another option, if you have an MSDOS PC with serial port is to use Procomm's emulation.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Re: terminfo see here
Click to expand...

thanks, i think i'm getting somewhere?

"sudo apt-get install ncurses-term" loads the terminals
"locate vt100" finds /lib/terminfo/v/vt100
a check out to /lib/terminfo/ now shows a "w" directory
a check in /lib/terminfo/w shows wy50

sudo minicom mom -t wy50..... now doesn't error, but opens weird, shouldn't the mimicom status line show wy50 in stead of vt102?
plus all the gibberish displayed is new.


'((+`1
Welcome to minicom 2.7.1

OPTIONS: I18n
Compiled on Aug 13 2017, 15:25:34.
Port /dev/ttyUSB0, 10:42:44

Press CTRL-A Z for help on special keys

(`6)7 T`1`0CTRL-A Z for help | 9600 8N1 | NOR | Minicom 2.7.1 | VT102 |
 
The minicom is still expecting vt102 codes from the machine, but now is putting out wy50 codes to the screen - which doesn't work because the screen is not a wy50 terminal. This is not changing the emulation presented by minicom, only the way minicom tries to control your screen.
 
durgadas311 said:
Yes, some of those seem to be printers. The list of terminals seems rather small and esoteric. I don't recognize many of them. I'm guessing this machine had a rather narrow customer base, or at least had a narrow list of supported peripherals. That's not uncommon, depending on the era. Another option would be to "write" a TDV for vt100 and use it. Is there any information on how to do that for this machine? I suspect one could "disassemble" a TDV against a know terminal type and get some idea of how to create one.
Click to expand...

Doug,

I've written drivers, and still have their source code, but the issue is i need a stable enough terminal emulation to open a text file on the vintage computer (Alpha Micro) and push the source code in to it so it can be assembled.
 
curbie said:
Doug,

I've written drivers, and still have their source code, but the issue is i need a stable enough terminal emulation to open a text file on the vintage computer (Alpha Micro) and push the source code in to it so it can be assembled.
Click to expand...

Log into the destination machine using anything from linux. Then on the destination machine you can

cat > file.a

start a serial file transfer of the source file

when it's done, hit ^D to save the file.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Got a DOS machine with a serial port? I've used Procomm Plus to do that.
Click to expand...

i'm sure i saw a tutorial on how to get procomm going on dosbox, i know procomm worked for me i wanted to learn something native, but i also need something that works with the Alpha. Thanks for all your help.
 
doug,

these old Alpha Micro aren't a unix based os, but that does spark an idea. thanks.
 
The tutorial I remember on how to get procomm going on dosbox, was actually a tutorial on how to get procomm going on DosEmu, which is now up and talking to my vintage computer.

It works real well, I found a couple of glitches, and it’s not clear if they are, and can be resolved by configuration tweaks. All in all on first look, it’s way better than anything else I’ve tried. Here are my notes.

Tutorial Procomm on DosEmu Outline here:
http://solarflow.dynu.net/pcplus/index.html

DOS Procomm Download here:
http://solarflow.dynu.net/pcplus/download.html

DosEmu docs Here:
http://www.dosemu.org/docs/README/1.4/t1.html

for me I used a USB to DB9 converter
which Ubuntu configured as ttyUSB0 (needed in next step)

Open /ect/dosemu/dosemu.conf

Find, un-commment, and edit line
# $_com1 = ""
to
$_com1 = "/dev/ttyUSB0"

unzip pcplus.zip to somewhere, I chose /home/curbie/ProcommPlus
then change directory to, and copy ProcommPlus files to dosemu drive D:
cd .dosemu/drives/d/
sudo cp -r /home/curbie/ProcommPlus .

Start dosemu as root if you need root for usb
sudo dosemu

change to DOS drive D:

change to ProcommPlus directory:
cd Proco~##

run ProcommPlus
PCPLUS

At least that’s what worked for me, you may have to spend some time with the Docs, but it seems worth it.

curbie
 
OK, last post to this thread, I've have the Procomm terminal emulation tweaked to near perfection, if there is still a an emulation glitch, which I would think there has to be, I can't find it, editors, simple output, and dynamic displays all now work, and no clunky vintage terminal taking up limited desk space.

as important, I'm now pushing files (source code) from my Linux system where they are stored, to the vintage computer for re-assembly, the only issue of any note was i had to split a large file for transfer, then append (cat) them after transfer. for me, procomm was a clear winner.
 
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