AT&T 630 terminal - software ??

[Glen Overby]

In article <9348 at smoke.BRL.MIL> gwyn at brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>) writes:
>In article <1003 at vsi.COM> friedl at vsi.COM (Stephen J. Friedl) writes:
>>Sorry, AT&T has mislead you.  This is the pricing for the 630:
>    Part Name:                Comcode:        Part Number:        $Cost:
>1)  Controller (640Kb)        501 001 671        553 750 AAA        920.00
>2)  Monitor                501 001 697        53D 610 YAA           815.00
>3)  98-Key Keyboard        501 004 865        56K 420 ADA V2        108.00
>4)  Mouse, 3-button,red        524 594 157        459 415           115.00

I find this price to be a bit above that of the common PC clone.  So why
hasn't somebody written a a terminal emulator for such a machine which
operates somewhat like the BLIT?  Even a PC should at least be able to
display multiple windows without crawling too badly, and if you put a
fancier video adapter (such as EGA or VGA) on the machine, you can have more
than 25 lines (this, of course, does bring the price of the PC closer to
that of the Real Thing).

Maybe it would be better if some relatively terminal-independent "windowed
terminal protocol" would be defined (I don't know how much of this already
exists with the Blit, and how much of it AT&T will give away).  There are
obviously are places where machine independence is impossible, such as when
the user interface part of an editor is downloaded into the terminal, but
this could certainly be accomodated in the protocol.

I have seen a program called "uw" which runs on a Macintosh and provides
multiple-window access.  It's pretty Macintosh-specific but I still thought
it as interesting.

When your host computer goes down, you can still play games on the PC (or
some other marginally productive activity)

The coffee cup holder would, of course, be an "optional feature" :-)

Glen Overby     ncoverby at plains.nodak.edu
uunet!ndsuvax!ncoverby                  ncoverby at ndsuvax (Bitnet)