Answer to weird character set question (NCSA telnet/ProComm)

[J.D. Baldwin]

A week ago, under the subject: "What is with this character set?" I asked
the following question (abridged):

[article <314 at usna.mil>]
>Sometimes, when I accidentally list out a binary file,
>I get the usual garbage characters on my screen.  Then, when I stop the
>listing (either by waiting for it to end, or by hitting ^C), everything
>I type (or is typed back to me) is in "garbage" characters--the character
>set seems to have been mapped to the upper half of the IBM extended character
>set.
>
>Nothing I do (Alt-R for reset, clear, stty, etc.) clears this problem, 
>short of logging off and logging back on.

I should have written, ". . . short of terminating the session and 
starting another one."

In any case, I got several answers:

------------------Answer #1 (abridged)------------------------
From:	hamlin at BLACKBIRD.AFIT.AF.MIL (Joe Hamlin)

>Try the following (you essentially type this in "blind", since
>the characters get echo'd as "garbage"):
>
>echo "^V^O"
>
>What we're doing is sending a CTRL-O to the terminal.  Just typing
>CTRL-O doesn't work.  The "^V^O" is actually typed as
>QUOTE CTRL-V CTRL-O QUOTE.

This was the first solution I tried, and it worked just fine.

-----------------Answer #2 (abridged)-------------------------
From:	andyb at coat.com (Andy Behrens)

>My terminal (a vt52 lookalike) uses <esc>F to select alternate
>characters and <esc>G to select the normal set.  Look at your termcap
>entries for as= and ae= respectively.

Yep.  Sure enough--my /etc/termcap entry for vt100 reads

    ae=^O:as=^N:...

This fits in nicely with Joe's suggestion about sending a ^O to the terminal
to select the normal character set.  Experimentation confirms that sending
a ^N selects graphics characters.

-----------------Answer #3 (abridged)-------------------------
From:	Joel Spolsky <spolsky-joel at YALE.EDU>

>. . . make a little file containing the
>following sequence:
>
>	<esc> ( B <esc> ) B
>
>Then if your terminal freaks out, just cat this file. 

Worked fine as well.  I'm not too clear on why, but Joel mentioned that he
dug it out of an ANSI manual.
-----------------Answer #4------------------------------------
From:   me

While playing around looking for answers, I discovered the unix 'reset'
command!  Also works.

Thanks to all who responded.  Hope this helps someone else out there.
--
>From the catapult of:               |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I
   _, J. D. Baldwin, Comp Sci Dept  |+| say, I am quite prepared not only to
 __||____:::)=}-  U.S. Naval Academy|+| retract it, but also to deny under
 \      / baldwin at cad.usna.navy.mil |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer
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