[9fans] Nextstaion as plan9 terminal

[9fans] Nextstaion as plan9 terminal

[Matthias Teege]

Moin,

is it possible to use a Nextstation as a plan9 terminal?
In the plan9 programmers manual there is an hint about
that. Must I install a complete plan9 or is booting from a
floppy sufficient?

Many thanks
Matthias

--
Matthias Teege -- matthias@mteege.de -- http://emugs.de
make world not war
PGP-Key auf Anfrage

Re: [9fans] Nextstaion as plan9 terminal

[James A. Robinson]

> is it possible to use a Nextstation as a plan9 terminal?
> In the plan9 programmers manual there is an hint about
> that.

I tried it because I was curious, and thought it was neat. But I stopped
using it and went back to a PC terminal because the NeXT was just too
slow. You can get a 1u PC put together these days which would blow away
the nextstation in terms of performance (graphics and processor).

In any case, it was the version 2 release which could boot plan 9 on a
nextstation.  I got it working on an old nextstation a friend scavanged,
and it didn't require very much work. A bit of playing with the boot
parameters, and I wouldn't have had to do that if I could have gotten
ahold of an older tftp setup.


Jim

Re: [9fans] Nextstaion as plan9 terminal

[Frank da Cruz]

In article <87elowlli9.fsf@moon.mteege.de>,
Matthias Teege <9fans@cse.psu.edu> wrote:
: is it possible to use a Nextstation as a plan9 terminal?
:
You mean, like a Telnet client?  Sure.  The main issue is that Plan 9
uses UTF-8 character encoding but the NeXT terminal window (e.g.
Stuart) does not.  But all is not lost.  Use C-Kermit:

  http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/ckermit.html

as your Telnet client and it will convert between UTF-8 and the local
NeXT character set if you tell it to.  (The NeXT character set is like
MS Code Page 1252, but with its own unique encoding.)

You can also use C-Kermit to make serial connections to Plan 9, thru
a null-modem cable (tricky for NeXT with its two different kinds of
Din-8 connectors) or modem.

Of course C-Kermit need not run on NeXTSTEP -- it can run on practically
any UNIX-based OS that exists (or ever did, at least post-V7).  Versions
are also available for Windows, VMS, etc.  The Linux version would make
a better Plan 9 terminal, since UTF-8 Linux xterms are now becoming
available.

C-Kermit is also available for Plan 9, where it can be used to make
the opposite kind of connection: from Plan 9 outwards.  In this case
it can convert between the remote character set (Latin-1, Latin-2,
NeXT, Japanese EUC, etc) and local UTF-8.  Unfortunately the Plan 9
version only can make serial connections since nobody has ever
added networking support to it.  (Anybody who'd like to do this,
please contact me -- now would be a good time, since version 8.0 is
soon to be released.)

- Frank

Re: [9fans] Nextstaion as plan9 terminal

[Boyd Roberts]

> is it possible to use a Nextstation as a plan9 terminal?

iirc, rob had one once;  he said he liked the keyboard or
the screen.  this would have been back in '92-93.

now, whether the port can be released is another story.

Re: [9fans] Nextstaion as plan9 terminal

[William K. Josephson]

On Mon, Sep 24, 2001 at 07:00:46PM +0200, Boyd Roberts wrote:
> > is it possible to use a Nextstation as a plan9 terminal?
>
> iirc, rob had one once;  he said he liked the keyboard or
> the screen.  this would have been back in '92-93.
>
> now, whether the port can be released is another story.

Unless you have a 2nd Ed. license, you're out of luck -- rob tried,
but to no avail.

 -WJ

Re: [9fans] Nextstaion as plan9 terminal

[presotto]

The screen was nice but I like the new digital LCD's better.  The keyboard
was on a par with the lexmark, now also defunct.  The mouse just plain sucked
with 2 whole buttons.  We used to have to wire wrap two pins together on the
ps2 interface to plug in our own mouse and make it work.  We also had continuing
problems with backing out of interrupts: the processor didn't take interrupts
between instructions.  Instead you had to figure out the state of the machine
and back it out by hand.  We were pretty good at this but I remember there still
being a lingering problem.

Re: [9fans] Nextstaion as plan9 terminal

[Boyd Roberts]

> We also had continuing problems with backing out of interrupts:
> the processor didn't take interrupts between instructions.  Instead
> you had to figure out the state of the machine and back it out by hand.
> We were pretty good at this but I remember there still being a lingering
> problem.

reminds me of the early 68020s.  apart from the n too many interrupt
stacks frames there was a scary piece of assembler to mangle the
frame and then resume -- nasty.

Re: [9fans] Nextstaion as plan9 terminal

[Jon Snader]

On Mon, Sep 24, 2001 at 01:24:47PM -0400, presotto@plan9.bell-labs.com wrote:
> The keyboard was on a par with the lexmark, now also defunct.

One pleasant exception to the continuing devolution of (esp. pc) hardware
is <http://pckeyboard.com/customizer.html>.

Jon Snader

Re: [9fans] Nextstaion as plan9 terminal

[jmk]

If you follow the link on that page for the 'Mighty Mouse'
you will find the Lexmark keyboard.

On Mon Sep 24 14:29:34 EDT 2001, jsnader@ix.netcom.com wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 24, 2001 at 01:24:47PM -0400, presotto@plan9.bell-labs.com wrote:
> > The keyboard was on a par with the lexmark, now also defunct.
>
> One pleasant exception to the continuing devolution of (esp. pc) hardware
> is <http://pckeyboard.com/customizer.html>.
>
> Jon Snader