[9fans] terminal types and photos?

[9fans] terminal types and photos?

[Derek Peschel]

 From keyboard(6) and "The Various Ports" I came up with this list of terminals
that Plan 9 has supported:

Carerra
Gnot
PC
Alpha PC
Viaduct
NeXT
SLC (is that a Sun?)
SparcStation 2
Magnum

Is that all?  Does anyone have photos of the custom ones?  If you combined
all the features that Plan 9 programs expect from the keyboard, what would
the result look like and what would it send to the computer?

Personally, I think a keyboard should simply send up/down messages and let
the computer do the decoding.  It should also have enough modifier keys
to allow at least 256 characters to be sent.  When it's appropriate, programs
should accept key sequences rather than ASCII characters since Control-Shift-A
may be useful.  I'm not advocating Emacs or anything like it (it's based on
constant hacking rather than planning) but I don't want to give up keyboard-
controlled programs, or the right to use any sequences I can type.  I'm also
not saying every command or character should be typable in one stroke.

I know many 9fans prefer mice.  I would need a mouse pointer I can see,
and a set of mouse gestures that allows me to work with structured data,
before I could change.  I do think mice win when you are doing work that may
involve any part of the screen.

-- Derek

Re: [9fans] terminal types and photos?

[Geoff Collyer]

Is that all?!?!  What's missing, IBM 3270 support?  Teletype model 37
support?  I guess Plan 9 was never ported to microVAXen nor PDP-15s;
have to get cracking on that.

The Carerras in question have MIPS CPUs.  The Viaducts are not
terminals, they're network encryption devices with Power PC CPUs.  The
SLC is indeed a Sun and the Magnums were made by MIPS.

There was some form of terminal with a Hobbit CPU in it, possibly a
form of Gnot?  SGI Indigos were supported.  The ipaq (bitsy) is still
supported.

Re: [9fans] terminal types and photos?

[Geoff Collyer]

I suppose there is one other obvious candidate for a terminal port:
modern Macs.  I believe that's underway.  Some NCD's X terminals might
have made decent Plan 9 terminals too.

Re: [9fans] terminal types and photos?

[a]

// ...modern Macs.  I believe that's underway.

oo! any details? who? my kernel hacking skills are minimal, but i've
got a moderate variety of G3 and G4 boxes to test stuff on, at least.

// Some NCD's X terminals might have made decent Plan 9 terminals...

i think they still would, although i've not got any anymore, and the 
cost proposition isn't quite as compelling as it used to be. they're
still nice self-contained boxes, although i like the older ones
more (which have the advantage of being mips; are *all* the current
ones x86?).

i'd just be happy if i can buy a viaduct or epia or some brick-like
thing with plan9 pre-installed.
ア

Re: [9fans] terminal types and photos?

[Geoff Collyer]

You'd have to look in the archives for the Mac porting effort.
I believe north_ was heading up the effort and maintains a web
page with progress reports.

I was thinking of the MIPS-based NCDs.  I haven't looked at
their current product line.

Re: [9fans] terminal types and photos?

[Charles Forsyth]

>>The ipaq (bitsy) is still supported.

only in its original h36xx form, with SA1110, not the newer XScale ones

Re: [9fans] terminal types and photos?

[Geoff Collyer]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 56 bytes --]

True enough.  What is an Xscale anyway?  A faster ARM?

[-- Attachment #2: Type: message/rfc822, Size: 1869 bytes --]

From: Charles Forsyth <forsyth@terzarima.net>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] terminal types and photos?
Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2004 11:31:35 0000
Message-ID: <9850e8e23b844cd5a90286e1245219b0@terzarima.net>

>>The ipaq (bitsy) is still supported.

only in its original h36xx form, with SA1110, not the newer XScale ones

Re: [9fans] terminal types and photos?

[Charles Forsyth]

>>True enough.  What is an Xscale anyway?  A faster ARM?

it's a family of Intel ARM5-based processors with
a (fairly) standard core and a range of application-specific
modules surrounding it.   in its PXA25x form, it's similar
to the Strongarm but many of the bugs are different, some of the
peripherals are different, and most of the registers are in different
places even when the bit values are the same.
at least they redesigned the DMA.  that A bit B bit dance was just confused.

the PXA250 didn't quite give the power or speed improvements
over SA1110 that were expected, though it's all right.
the PXA255 supposedly manages it.

if i sound a bit grumpy it's because some of the PXA
bugs are fairly fundamental.  for instance, if fancy clock switching
and sleep modes are big selling points for the device, and supposedly enabled by
setting a few bits, you'd expect them to work, wouldn't you?
especially since they were embarrassingly wrong in the StrongARM.
silly you.  if anything, the situation is worse.  the errors are decently
documented in the errata, but the fix is as fiddly
as ever, and bigger.  the cache might corrupt things.  still, it's not too
hard to get it to work.  in general, however, i've found that
IBM does a better job, with the smaller powerpcs.  i don't know why.  generally things work as
documented, the documentation is well-organised,
and the bugs in the errata tend to be understandably obscure.
fairly tidy architecturally as well.
my big IBM powerpc processor hasn't arrived yet so i've yet to see about that.

Re: [9fans] terminal types and photos?

[Derek Peschel]

geoff@collyer.net (Geoff Collyer) wrote in message news:<064c5840b7c22fbda4e4743e0aef98bc@collyer.net>...

> Is that all?!?!

I meant "did I miss any that are documented, or are there any missing
from the documentation?".

I'd love to hear about the Mac port.  I can test it my on 350MHz G4.

-- Derek

Re: [9fans] terminal types and photos?

[rog]

> I would need a [...] set of mouse gestures that [allow] me to work with
> structured data

acme mouse chording does pretty well in this respect.

Re: [9fans] terminal types and photos?

[Richard C Bilson]

> From: Geoff Collyer <geoff@collyer.net>
> 
> I was thinking of the MIPS-based NCDs.  I haven't looked at
> their current product line.

I've always taken an interest in these since they've traditionally been
cheaply available used around here, as the university migrates away
from them.  I've never been able to find sufficient technical
documentation to enable me to write anything for them, unfortunately.
Now the screen on mine is fading, which means that it will probably end
up in the dumpster the next time it gets in my way.