Possibly silly, certainly a little OT Question

[gene heskett]

On Friday, December 24, 2010 12:26:13 pm Glynn Clements did opine:

> gene heskett wrote:
> > I have a minicom session connected to a serial port of an antique
> > computer, and the diffs in the keyboard codes for the control
> > characters are killing me because I can't use the uparrow & repeat
> > functions of the terminal software driver on that machine.  The arrow
> > keys in particular, as sent from this end are just garbage chars to
> > the old machine.
> > 
> > So the first thing I need to map is from whatever the up arrow key now
> > sends, to actually send an 0x09 to the other end of the cable.
> > 
> > But I haven't a clue how to go about that.  I've looked through
> > minicom's menu's, and it looks like I can translate the printable
> > characters, but I don't see where I can diddle the control chars. 
> > I've also look at the setserial options without anything useful
> > reaching up and slapping me in the face.
> > 
> > Can anyone suggest a better configuration tool/location of a file,
> > whatever, that would give me the data as to how to do this for minicom
> > only?
> 
> Minicom doesn't support remapping of the cursor keys; you get to
> choose between VT100 and ANSI, and that's all.
> 
> One possibility is to run it under "screen", which allows arbitrary
> remapping of keys, and remap the cursor keys to function keys (which
> can then be rebound within minicom). Another possibility is to modify
> minicom's source code. Yet another possibility is to just type literal
> control characters, but that's likely to be annoying if you need to do
> it a lot.

I haven't tried screen recently, the last time I did it locked the machine 
and I had to do a reset button reboot. That was obviously many moons back 
up the log.  I did try to issue a few ctl+9 type keys, but apparently 
minicom intercepts most of them, and I managed to disable much of the 
keyboard and had to restart minicom.

Discouraging is what it it.  Minicom's vt-102 should be compat, at least I 
have for that machine, a vt-102 that works, and a vt-220 that works against 
other systems such as a dec pdp-11/23 which expected a vt-220 but when it 
smoked its H.O.T. & dec, being their typical selves, wanted nearly 3 grand 
for another, then current vt-550 that they wouldn't guarantee I could 
configure to be vt-220 compatible, then I re-wrote the vt-102 I had to add 
the vt-220 esc codes and used it.  The antique machine is a TSR-80 Color 
Computer 3, currently running todays version of OS9, called nitros9 because 
we've very heavily optimized it to about 2x speed without adjusting the 
clock which is married to the video on that hardware.

Are the authors of minicom still available?  Or how about src code?  I 
found some names in the docs and sent an email to those, but it bounced and 
that was probably 2 years back up the log.

There are some things that Just Work(TM) and have done so forever, and we 
have ID10T's who want to remove the packages for lack of development 
activity.  Like Procmail.  Dumb.  And I suppose minicom is also on that 
list.  More bells and whistles & eye candy, but less true versatility and 
functionality seems to be the order of the day for linux.  Every time I 
upgrade, something that did work, now doesn't.

Anyway, to end this on a positive note, thank you very much, Glynn.

Have a Merry Christmas and a happy, and healthy New Year 2011.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
"I'd love to go out with you, but I did my own thing and now I've got
to undo it."