Date   : Wed, 13 Mar 1985 18:58:29 EST
From   : "John S. Labovitz" <hnij@bnl.ARPA>
Subject: Re: What's a good terminal???

I like the Wyse-50 a lot.  I've got one at home, and we've got about
20 at work.  Reliability is pretty good -- the ones we send back usually
don't work the first time (e.g., they don't fail months later).  We've
gotten a few that have a problem with the flyback transformer, and emit
an obnoxious high-pitched whine.  Also, some of the yokes aren't adjusted
correctly, so the screen is sorta tilted.

Now the real problems...

This has the famous ``attribute-takes-space'' problem.  That means that
there is an extra space when switching between attributes.  This
is a real pain, especially because most programs (editors, etc.) don't
know about this space.  Solution:  if all you want is reverse video or
dim (and don't need BOTH), you can use ``protected'' mode, and make
all protected chars appear in {reverse,dim}.  This is what we do.

There is a ``feature'' that turns on the auxiliary printer port and
disables the screen output and keyboard, causing the terminal to lockup
until it receives the ``printer-off' command.  Unfortunately, the
printer-on code is a ^X, which is line-kill to some machines.  If the
machine echos all chars (like our Tandem), or if you are running half-
duplex or on a TAC, this can be a big problem.

Another problem related to this is that there is a printer-on
command which does NOT lock out the screen.  Problem is, you can't tell
whether or not it's on, and if you are running the screen faster than
the auxiliary port (which can only go at a max of 19200), you start
losing chars to the screen).

       @hnij@