Does anyone have experience with and recommends a serial terminal emulator for Linux? I need something that does Wyse or IBM emulation also sends and receives ASCII files. My notes say I used ProComm 15 years ago which I’d need to relearn, so I’d rather learn something native.
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Terminal emulator for Linux
- Thread starter curbie
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Chuck(G)
25k Member
I've used minicom for years. I believe that the terminal type can be set via the -t command line flag (references terminfo).
HoJoPo
Veteran Member
I used minicom on Linux to do such things, it's a text based terminal emulator with file send/receive.
commodorejohn
Veteran Member
Yeah, minicom has been pretty painless for me.
lowen
Veteran Member
The perennial favorite minicom has been mentioned, and I myself use this A LOT. It is most like the old MS-DOS comm program Telix in style.
But you have other options. There is the Windows favorite PuTTY, which is available for Linux. On a Debian system:
PuTTY does serial ports well.
Years back I used an X11 terminal emulator called seyon, which is no longer maintained. Seyon can emulate Tektronix 4014 in addition to the standard VT100 stuff. It's still available on Debian 10, even though it has been an orphaned package for over ten years (!!);
should do the trick.
These days I use more special-purpose serial programs, like IFtools' Cleverterm and MSB (I have both an IFtools RS-232 and RS-485 sniffer, and man do they work well!).
If you want to go vintage, you might be able to port the ancient 'pcomm' program, which was a Unix near-clone of ProComm Plus. You can get pcomm still in the archives, as shell archives; the first in the thread is at https://www.tuhs.org/Usenet/unix-pc.sources/1989-February/000003.html I used versions of pcomm on my old Xenix System III box (Tandy 6000) and the AT&T 3B1.
But you have other options. There is the Windows favorite PuTTY, which is available for Linux. On a Debian system:
Code:
sudo apt install pterm putty putty-doc putty-toolsPuTTY does serial ports well.
Years back I used an X11 terminal emulator called seyon, which is no longer maintained. Seyon can emulate Tektronix 4014 in addition to the standard VT100 stuff. It's still available on Debian 10, even though it has been an orphaned package for over ten years (!!);
Code:
sudo apt install seyonThese days I use more special-purpose serial programs, like IFtools' Cleverterm and MSB (I have both an IFtools RS-232 and RS-485 sniffer, and man do they work well!).
If you want to go vintage, you might be able to port the ancient 'pcomm' program, which was a Unix near-clone of ProComm Plus. You can get pcomm still in the archives, as shell archives; the first in the thread is at https://www.tuhs.org/Usenet/unix-pc.sources/1989-February/000003.html I used versions of pcomm on my old Xenix System III box (Tandy 6000) and the AT&T 3B1.
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Chuck(G)
25k Member
There's also Linux screen, which I use occasionally.
commodorejohn
Veteran Member
PuTTY does serial ports fine, but it doesn't do much for file transfer over serial. Looks like there's a fork called ExtraPuTTY that adds this, but it appears to be Windows-only.
mloewen
Experienced Member
lowen
Veteran Member
Qodem... Never had heard of this one, but dude this looks interesting.
Chuck(G)
25k Member
If it's in termcap/terminfo, it will. Use the -t command-line argument.
is there a way to tell what terminal options termcap has, I tried sudo minicom alpha -t wyse, wyse 50, wy30, wy50, wy60, soroc, but No termcap entry for same.
Chuck(G)
25k Member
You may need to set $TERMINFO to the location of terminfo, which is usually /usr/share/terminfo, if minicom doesn't immediately see it. e.g. "export TERMINFO=/usr/share/termifo"
Looking at the terminfo directory, you'll probably see at least a thousand definitions. wy50, for example will get you a Wyse 50 definition.
To get a list run "toe -a -s"
"termcap" mostly applies to older versions of Unix/BSD. "Terminfo" is the replacement.
Looking at the terminfo directory, you'll probably see at least a thousand definitions. wy50, for example will get you a Wyse 50 definition.
To get a list run "toe -a -s"
"termcap" mostly applies to older versions of Unix/BSD. "Terminfo" is the replacement.
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durgadas311
Veteran Member
termcap/terminfo is used to tell Unix/Linux programs how to communicate to a physical terminal connected to Unix/Linux. That is *not* terminal emulation. If you have a Wyse 50 (do any still exist?) connected to your PC then that might help. But, I took your original request to be that you have some legacy application(s) running on vintage hardware that emits Wyse 50 ESC codes and you need some way to handle those on Linux. for that you need a Wyse 50 *terminal emulation*, not Wyse 50 termcap/terminfo.
To answer your question, even though I don't think it is what you want, on my system the terminfo files are part of the package "ncurses-term", which you would need to install. Again, I don't believe this is what you need.
Doug,
I'm trying to connect my Ubuntu computer as a terminal to a vintage computer, the vintage computer can talk to any terminal so long as it has a native terminal driver for it. I chose the wyse50 emulation because they are more common than AM60 emulation.
If you know of a terminal emulation package you would recommend, even a for purchase package, I'm all ears.
durgadas311
Veteran Member
I guess the question for you is, what terminals does this vintage computer support?
minicom seems to be setup to emulate a vt100. I know of some emulators for Heath/Zenith H19 terminals - which is an extension of VT52 I believe. That's about all that I've dealt with myself.
Seeing a list of what this vintage computer supports might help find one that's got a modern emulation.
minicom seems to be setup to emulate a vt100. I know of some emulators for Heath/Zenith H19 terminals - which is an extension of VT52 I believe. That's about all that I've dealt with myself.
Seeing a list of what this vintage computer supports might help find one that's got a modern emulation.
Doug, some of these are printer drivers.
AB62 TDV 4 AB62A TDV 5 AB62X TDV 4 ADOBE TDV 1
ALPHA TDV 3 ALPHAA TDV 4 AM6X TDV 3 AM60 TDV 3
AM62 TDV 3 AM62A TDV 3 AM62AB TDV 4 AM62C TDV 4
AM62CG TDV 4 AM62F TDV 4 AM62GF TDV 4 AM62GM TDV 4
AM62M TDV 4 AM62N TDV 4 AM65 TDV 4 AM65A TDV 4
AM65AX TDV 4 AM65EX TDV 4 AM7X TDV 3 AM70 TDV 3
AM70AW TDV 3 AM70E TDV 3 AM70EG TDV 3 AM70EW TDV 4
AM70G TDV 3 AM70GW TDV 4 AM72 TDV 4 AM72A TDV 4
AM75 TDV 4 AM75EX TDV 4 AM75G TDV 4 AM75GX TDV 4
A70EGW TDV 4 DIABLO TDV 1 FLACOL TDV 7 FLIP TDV 1
FLPA60 TDV 5 FLPA62 TDV 5 FLPCOL TDV 6 FLPCOM TDV 6
FLPW50 TDV 6 FLP210 TDV 6 FLP62 TDV 6 FLP62A TDV 6
FLP62B TDV 6 FLP62D TDV 6 FLP62X TDV 6 FLP65A TDV 6
FLP925 TDV 5 FLP950 TDV 6 FLWCOL TDV 6 FLW62A TDV 6
FPCCOL TDV 8 FWSCOL TDV 8 FWYCOL TDV 7 F72COL TDV 7
HPJET7 TDV 1 HPJET8 TDV 1 LASWRT TDV 1 MACCOL TDV 9
SOROC TDV 2 SOR135 TDV 3 TELTYP TDV 1 TK4105 TDV 4
TVI925 TDV 2 T1340 TDV 1 T1350 TDV 1 T950 TDV 3
WYSE TDV 4 WY50 TDV 3
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