VT100/VT132 & ins/del line/char

[hoffman at pitt.UUCP]

A while back someone brought up the debate regarding the existence or
non-existence of insert/delete line/char functions on VT100-series
terminals.  Two facts mentioned were:

	1.  Vanilla VT100-AA terminals cannot do these functions.
	2.  VT132-AA terminals can.

Some people, however, seemed to think that VT100s *could* do these
things.  Well, as I have just found out, they may be right!  We had
a bare-minimum VT100-AA terminal here, and I verified that it indeed
(as documented) did not have the ins/del functions.  We just bought
the VT1XX-AB Advanced Video and VT1XX-AC Printer Port options and I
installed them yesterday.  The book with the printer port states that
the VT100 will now have these ins/del functions.  The book is right!
I can now "setenv TERM vt132" on that VT100 and the insert/delete functions
work as they do on my regular VT132!  I'm impressed!  This means that those
of you who miss those functions on your VT100s need only buy the
Printer Port option to get them!  Note, though that the printer port
requires the Advanced Video option to be installed, so you'll have
to buy it if you don't have it already.

I don't know if this is only true for recent printer ports, but here
are the details on the one I installed:

VT1XX-AC, dated 20-Sep-82
Board P/N 54-14260-00, schematic rev. F, etch rev. B.

I hope this is useful to some of you.

-- 
Bob Hoffman
Pitt Computer Science