Possibly silly, certainly a little OT Question

[Pat Kane]

Gene,

What sort of stuff do you need to do via the serial console?
What sort of legacy system are you talking to?

 I took a look a quick look at the minicom source code and
 it looks a bit crufty:
     http://freshmeat.net/projects/minicom/
     http://freshmeat.net/urls/88a87ae332ec17462ac2b3897ad59b5d
but I'd be willing to hack at it over the Xmas break.

Pat
----


On Fri, Dec 24, 2010 at 11:51 AM, gene heskett <gheskett at wdtv.com> wrote:
> 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."
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