[Simh] Serial Console

[Mark Benson]

On 3 Jul 2012, at 12:03, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote:

> On 2012-07-03 11:49, Mark Benson wrote:
>> Simple question: Can SimH's CONSOLE output be directed to a Serial port
>> (i.e. via /dev/ttyS0)?
>>
>> If so how does it handle waiting for a terminal connection?
>>
>> If not, is there a reason why?
>
> I think I looked into this a few years ago, and found that it can't. There is no absolute reason why it would not be able to, but exactly how you control a physical serial port differs between OSes, so I suspect it would be hard to write generic.

Ah, that makes sense, yes, different OSs use different device names
etc. even within common UNIX methods. This wouldn't be such a big
hurdle if the onus was on the user to provide the full device path
though. That, of course, doesn't help with Windows or VMS but it might
widen it's UNIX campatibility?

> However, I think that under Unix, if you just log in on a serial port and start simh, you'd be more or less there already?

No, you see what I would like to do is connect a VT terminal directly
to SimH to use either as the OP console or to provide a real VT access
for the DZV11 emulation. This is all about cutting out multiple layers
if terminal emulation to get real VT interaction direct to the
emulator.

The reason is I have noticed that over Telnet VMS is pretty robust but
only offers a 'cut down' cinnection to remain compatible. Conversely,
GNU screen working directly as the console convinces VMS that it's a
real VT then it pukes when you run something like EVE or
TCPIP$CONFIG.COM because VMS is assuming the terminal can handle
features that screen cannot. There are also other things like
softloaded fonts etc that only real VT terminals handle properly that
break ir don't work in screen or telnet.

It'd be nice to hook the VT510 up and use that instead... wasjyst a thought.

-- 
Mark Benson

http://markbenson.org/blog
http://twitter.com/MDBenson