VIDEO TERMINAL INFORMATION 
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Welcome to my collection of information concerning character-cell video-display terminals and serial-line remote-graphics terminals.

When I say character-cell terminal, I mean some keyboard-possessing device that is connected to a host computer by a serial cable and typically (if not exclusively) is used to display textual information arriving in the form of ASCII (or perhaps EBCDIC) characters.

A serial-line remote-graphics-protocol terminal is also connected by a serial (usually RS-232-C) cable to a host, and it may display both ASCII text and graphics images sent to it by the remote host. Protocols for transmitting images include Tektronix vector graphics, DEC's ReGIS and Sixel protocols, and NAPLPS (North American Presentation-Level-Protocol Syntax).

X terminals in their own right are beyond the scope of this collection. An X terminal (such as the DEC VXT2000 or one of the products made by NCD, HDS, or Tektronix ) speaks the X protocol, displays graphics in a completely bit-mapped fashion, and prefers to communicate over high-speed connections such as Ethernet. I do, however, keep some information about how the "xterm" application emulates other hardware.

The information contained here varies considerably in quality, and I personally wrote only a small part of it, but many people, who still have reason to use a terminal, have found it useful.

There are no guarantees of applicability or fitness implied.

You should be able to access almost everything via HTTP. If you have trouble, let me know. If you possess information that you'd like to contribute to this collection, send me e-mail. Thanks.

...Richard S. Shuford
shuford@cs.utk.edu


  • General information about video terminals.

  • Video terminal products from DEC, including the classic VT100.
  • Video terminal products of IBM.
  • Video terminal products of Televideo.
  • Video terminal products from various vendors.

  • Keyboards, mice, and user-interface input.
  • Terminal emulation on your PC, Macintosh, or other computer.
  • Many Kermit implementations emulate a terminal.
  • X Window issues: emulating a character-cell terminal with xterm.

  • Information not specifically about terminals, but somehow relevant....

  • Direct anonymous FTP access to files. (skip the menus)
  • Direct anonymous FTP access to some printer/hardcopy info.
    In my copious free time, I also administer a mailing list for users of the fault-tolerant computers made by Stratus Computer, Inc. of Marlboro, Massachusetts. Stratus computers can run the VOS operating system or a fault-tolerant version of UNIX, known as FTX.

    Here are some links of interest to the Stratus community.

    (In Knoxville, "UTK" is the main campus of the University of Tennessee.)
    East Tennessee's telephone area code is now 423.

    Introductory material copyright 1995 and archive contents collection copyright © 1995 Richard S. Shuford / shuford@cs.utk.edu
    (my home page)

    If you appreciate having this information available....

    Lynx Friendly: These Web pages do not depend on cute Netscape tricks. I figure that, if you need information on terminals, you are probably using Lynx.

    URL of this page: http://www.cs.utk.edu/~shuford/terminal_index.html