DEC VT05 with OS/8 -- basic system rebuild?

[Vincent Slyngstad]

From: "Chris Elmquist"
Sent: Thursday, May 14, 2009 4:10 AM
> I may have missed some facts earlier in this thread--  but does the system
> obey hardware flow control such as CTS?  ie, if CTS is low, will it be
> blocked from transmitting?   If that is obeyed by all of your OS and
> software, then it is not hard to build a microcontroller that would sit
> between the system and the terminal, adding the delays you need on <cr>
> while buffering for and hardware flow controlling back toward the PDP-8.

The short answer is no -- none of the PDP-8's do output flow control
"out-of-the-box".  (I haven't checked on the DECmates, maybe some of
those do.)

On some models this should be relatively easy to retrofit.  (I don't know
how to do it offhand for the M8650 card, nor for the models before the 8/i,
though.)

And you'd still need the kludge you describe (or equivalent), since the
VT05 also doesn't generate a flow control signal.

    Vince