modern serial terminal

[Tony Duell]

>    For me, the reason is simple.  Terminal emulators are too damn  
> much trouble...emulation problems, key mapping, etc.  I've used  

Tell me aout it !. About 10 years ago I used one particularly bad 
emulator under Windows which couldn't even get VT100 cursor positioning 
right....

> pretty much all of them over the years, I think...the best one I've  
> used was SmarTerm 240, and even that is far from perfect.  Sometimes  
> what one really needs is an APPLIANCE...not an emulation of said  
> appliance built upon an unstable and problematic platform.

I feel the saem way about electronic test gear. I want a 'scope. Not a 
disguised PC pretending to be a 'scope. Not something running an OS never 
designed for real-time work that's liable to crash (or worse still do the 
wrong thing and not warn me about it) if I look at it wrong.

> 
>    Further...A VT320 terminal pulls less than half an ampere at 120V,  
> and is available for use within about fifteen seconds of  
> powerup...can anyone say either of those things for a PC running  
> terminal emulation software?

An HP100LX (which is PC-compatible-ish) will run for quite a time on a 
couple of AA cells (I would guess therefore a lot less than 60W!). I am 
pretty sure I could start up the built-in terminal emulator in well under 
15s.

[Sorry, couldn't resist. I use the 100LX and 95LX quite a bit as 
pocket-sized erminals when I'm sorting out serial problems]

-tony