[Simh] Problem using a real VT terminal with simh

[Robert G. Schaffrath]

Several years ago I wanted to hookup and old VT320 that I have and I did
manage to get it to work but I did not go with the direct serial I/O
connection in SiMH.  Instead I found a program called TCPToSer that
established a TCP/IP connection from the serial port.  It worked fine with
a USB to serial adapter that I had and I pointed the application at my SiMH
TCP/IP port.  This was way back in the mid-2000's.  The application was
available from www.tcptoser.de but that URL is now dead.  A search did turn
up a download from a site starting with "brother" but it is infected with
Win32/Spursint.F!cl.  If a clean copy of that software can be found, it
does work beautifully with SiMH.  I was able to navigate around EDT very
nicely using the GOLD key and various sequences my fingers still remembered
LOL.


On Tue, Dec 5, 2017 at 1:40 PM, <simh-request at trailing-edge.com> wrote:

> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Peter Allan <petermallan at gmail.com>
> To: "simh at trailing-edge.com" <simh at trailing-edge.com>
> Cc:
> Bcc:
> Date: Tue, 5 Dec 2017 17:56:29 +0000
> Subject: [Simh] Problem using a real VT terminal with simh
> I am trying to get a real VT420 terminal working with a simulated micro
> VAX 3900. However, I am having problems getting text displayed on the
> screen of the VT420.
>
> The host for simh is a standard PC running CentOS 6.9.
>
> I am connecting the VT420 to the PC using the 25-pin RS232 connector at
> the back of the VT420, going via a 25-pin to 9-pin adaptor, to the 9-pin
> RS232 connector on the PC. I am convinced that the physical connection is
> correct since I can start an agetty process at boot time and log into
> CentOS from the VT420. Everything works and displays as I would expect.
>
> For what follows, I have removed the starting of the agetty process so
> that nothing is controlling the /dev/ttyS0 device before I start simh.
>
> The simulated microVAX 3900 is running VMS 7.3 from an RA92 disk. This
> configuration has been running successfully for a long time and I am only
> now trying to add the connection of a physical terminal.
>
> In the vax.ini file, I have added the lines
>
> SET DZ LINES=4
> ATTACH DZ LINE=0,CONNECT=SER0
>
> Once the microVAX has booted, if I hit Enter on the VT420, then I can see
> that a login process starts on the simulated microVAX, but all I see on the
> screen of the VT420 is a few garbage characters. Despite that, when I type
> a username and a password, I do get logged into the simulated microVAX. Any
> commands that I type on the keyboard of the VT420 appears on the screen of
> the VT420 (except the password, of course), but anything that the microVAX
> is sending to the VT420 appears as garbage. There are recognisable
> characters, but if I TYPE a file, even a small one, what appears seems to
> be every 7th character from the file starting with the first character. The
> output of commands such as DIR appear to have the same problem.
>
> Furthermore, when I log into the microVAX, the VT420 goes through a reset,
> as though I had turned it off and on. I think this is because the login
> sequence does a SET TERMINAL/INQUIRE since if I type that command, exactly
> the same thing happens. This seems particularly odd since I have used that
> command many times with a real computer (although admittedly not with this
> particular terminal) and I have never seen this happen before.
>
> The VT420's RS232 port is set to a speed of 9600, with 8 bits and no
> parity and the TTA0: device on the microVAX also gets set to this
> combination.
>
> Hopefully I am just doing something wrong, but I can't see what that might
> be. Can anyone help with this please?
>
> Peter Allan
>
>
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