[Simh] HP 3000 Terminals

[Zachary Kline]

Hi All,

So I’ve been messing with the HP3000 simulator lately, and have become curious about the advantages of using a real, or emulated, HP terminal with MPE.
I was wondering if anybody knew of emulators for OS X or Linux, my preferred platforms.
More to the point, is their anything an HP terminal emulator could give me that regular Telnet wouldn’t?

Just curious really,
Zack.

[J. David Bryan]

On Wednesday, March 9, 2016 at 21:33, Zachary Kline wrote:

> More to the point, is their anything an HP terminal emulator could
> give me that regular Telnet wouldn´t?

With the basic software kit, the only application that requires an HP
terminal is V/3000. This is a forms generator and data entry system that
allowed one to design screen forms that could be tied into user
applications, such as an invoicing or payroll system (the 3000 was
primarily a business system). The HP terminals of the time, such as the
2645A, had the capability of entering data locally into the terminal's
memory and transmitting it later as a block to the computer. An invoice
form, for example, could be displayed for data entry, and when the user had
completed it, the terminal would transmit only the form content (but not
the surrounding forms framework).

HP terminals recognized a large set of "escape sequences" -- character
sequences beginning with the ESC character -- to control the cursor,
display in inverse video, blinking, or underlined, select among character
sets, etc. A lot of programs in the (user) Contributed Software Library
took advantage of this and so required HP terminals to run. But
unfortunately, the 3000 CSL isn't publicly available.

So, as a practical matter, using an HP terminal emulator doesn't buy you
much with the supplied software kit.

-- Dave

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2016-03-10 06:33, Zachary Kline wrote:
> More to the point, is their anything an HP terminal emulator could give me that regular Telnet wouldn’t?

You are comparing apples and oranges. A terminal emulator emulates a
terminal. Telnet is a program for connecting interactively from one
computer to another, and have nothing to do with terminal emulation.

Johnny

[Paul Koning]

> On Mar 10, 2016, at 12:03 PM, Johnny Billquist <***@softjar.se> wrote:
>
> On 2016-03-10 06:33, Zachary Kline wrote:
>> More to the point, is their anything an HP terminal emulator could give me that regular Telnet wouldn’t?
>
> You are comparing apples and oranges. A terminal emulator emulates a terminal. Telnet is a program for connecting interactively from one computer to another, and have nothing to do with terminal emulation.

True for most operating systems. On Windows, the two tend to get combined because you don't have a reasonable shell or terminal emulator window. So network terminal programs like PuTTY combine the telnet (and/or SSH) function with a terminal emulator.

paul

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2016-03-10 18:09, Paul Koning wrote:
>
>> On Mar 10, 2016, at 12:03 PM, Johnny Billquist <***@softjar.se> wrote:
>>
>> On 2016-03-10 06:33, Zachary Kline wrote:
>>> More to the point, is their anything an HP terminal emulator could give me that regular Telnet wouldn’t?
>>
>> You are comparing apples and oranges. A terminal emulator emulates a terminal. Telnet is a program for connecting interactively from one computer to another, and have nothing to do with terminal emulation.
>
> True for most operating systems. On Windows, the two tend to get combined because you don't have a reasonable shell or terminal emulator window. So network terminal programs like PuTTY combine the telnet (and/or SSH) function with a terminal emulator.

True. But then we're not really talking about "regular telnet", but a
program like PuTTY, which has telnet as the transport layer. Telnet is
still not a terminal emulation - PuTTY is, in this case.

Johnny

[Michael Kerpan]

Yes "Telnet" technically refers to a protocol, but it was clear that the OP
meant "standard GUI telnet client which implements something that works
vaguely like a VT100 with ANSI color tacked on."

I'd be interested in knowing what kind of options are out there for "real"
HP terminal emulation. Also, even if the supplied software kit doesn't
include much that needs more sophisticated terminal emulation, I'd hope
that the contributed software will eventually become available. I'd be
especially interested in seeing HP (Langston/Norton) Empire...

Mike

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2016-03-11 00:26, Michael Kerpan wrote:
> Yes "Telnet" technically refers to a protocol, but it was clear that the
> OP meant "standard GUI telnet client which implements something that
> works vaguely like a VT100 with ANSI color tacked on."

That was definitely not clear to me. In my head, he's running some bog
standard telnet client on a system where he probably is using some
windowing system, on which he is running a terminal application (think
xterm). What kind of emulation that terminal application provides I
don't know, but what he should be asking would be if some other terminal
application than "Xyzzy" would give him a better experience connected to
the HP machine. Telnet have nothing to do with it.

Johnny

--
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: ***@softjar.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol

[J. David Bryan]

On Thursday, March 10, 2016 at 18:26, Michael Kerpan wrote:

> I'd be interested in knowing what kind of options are out there for
> "real" HP terminal emulation.

I've used the following HP terminal emulators over the years:

- QCTerm (Windows) by AICS
http://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?sw=585

- AdvanceLink 2392 (DOS and Windows) by HP
http://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?sw=50
http://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?sw=178

- Reflection (DOS and Windows) by Walker, Richer, and Quinn
http://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?sw=308

- Crosstalk (Windows) by Attachmate

- Session (Windows) by Tymlabs

All of the emulators, except QCTerm, were commercial products. Reflection
is probably the one that offered the most faithful emulation. The others
were close, but not perfect, reproductions of the hardware behavior.

(I used QCTerm while developing the simulator.)

-- Dave

[Ken Cornetet]

Interestingly, AICS research has abandoned QCTerm.

They have sent me the source code which is Visual Basic, I believe.

They have also sent me an email stating that I can do whatever I want including making it open source.

I know nothing about Visual Basic, or even doing GUI programming. Does anyone want to take over development, or better yet, port to a cross platform GUI framework?

QCTerm really needs to be archived somewhere - the hp1000 simulator is severely hamstrung without it.


-----Original Message-----
From: Simh [mailto:simh-***@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of J. David Bryan
Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2016 10:54 PM
To: SIMH List <***@trailing-edge.com>
Subject: Re: [Simh] HP 3000 Terminals

On Thursday, March 10, 2016 at 18:26, Michael Kerpan wrote:

> I'd be interested in knowing what kind of options are out there for
> "real" HP terminal emulation.

I've used the following HP terminal emulators over the years:

- QCTerm (Windows) by AICS
http://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?sw=585

- AdvanceLink 2392 (DOS and Windows) by HP
http://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?sw=50
http://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?sw=178

- Reflection (DOS and Windows) by Walker, Richer, and Quinn
http://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?sw=308

- Crosstalk (Windows) by Attachmate

- Session (Windows) by Tymlabs

All of the emulators, except QCTerm, were commercial products. Reflection is probably the one that offered the most faithful emulation. The others were close, but not perfect, reproductions of the hardware behavior.

(I used QCTerm while developing the simulator.)

-- Dave

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