Portable terminals from the "Direct, Inc." company

 //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Newsgroups: comp.terminals
Message-ID: <ccfa1v$juv$1@nsnmpen3-gest.nuria.telefonica-data.net>
Organization: Telefonica Data Espagna
Date: Tue, 6 Jul 2004 22:45:26 +0000 (UTC)
From: Anonymous Guy <anonymous@bogus-address.com>
Subject: Direct 825 Terminal

Apologies in advance if this is a typical "stupid newbie" post.

I've acquired a 'Direct' brand terminal, model 825.  No documentation.
Extensive web searches have turned up no information on the beast.

Questions:

* Does anyone know what terminal emulation this unit supports?
  (Preliminary experimentation has shown that it responds as expected
  to some, but not all, VT-52 control codes.)

* Does anyone know where information about this unit can be found?

Any information appreciated!  Thanks.

 ..............................................................................

Newsgroups: comp.terminals
References: <ccfa1v$juv$1@nsnmpen3-gest.nuria.telefonica-data.net>
Message-ID: <rshu_20040707000001@stratagy.com>
Organization: The Late, Great Stratagy Users Group
Date: Wed, 7 Jul 2004 00:00:01 -0400 (EDT)
From: Richard S. Shuford <shuford*list.stratagy.com>
Subject: Re: Direct 825 Terminal

Anonymous Guy <anonymous@bogus-address.com> wrote:
>
> I've acquired a 'Direct' brand terminal, model 825.  No documentation.
> Extensive web searches have turned up no information on the beast.

Congratulations.  You've turned up a cousin to one of Eric Raymond's
terminal mysteries.  Yes, that Eric Raymond.

    http://www.catb.org/~esr/terminfo/questions.html

Send him some email.  He was looking specifically for the Direct 800,
but perhaps the Direct 825 would do.

Seriously, I myself have never seen any model terminal from Direct.
Perhaps you could look inside the case and see if there are any clues
of it being a rebadged variant product of some other vendor?

 ...RSS

-- 
What's today's yogurt obsession?
http://www.stonyfield.com/weblog/DailyScoop/index.html

 ..............................................................................

Newsgroups: comp.terminals
References: <rshu_20040707000001@stratagy.com>
Message-ID: <ccgc3p$1fns$1@news.wplus.net>
Date: Wed, 7 Jul 2004 08:26:36 +0000 (UTC)
From: Anonymous Guy <anonymous@bogus-address.com>
Subject: Re: Direct 825 Terminal

On 2004-07-07 Richard S. Shuford said:

   > Anonymous Guy wrote:
   >
   > > I've acquired a 'Direct' brand terminal, model 825.  No
   > > documentation.  Extensive web searches have turned up no
   > > information on the beast.
   >
   > Congratulations.  You've turned up a cousin to one of Eric
   > Raymond's terminal mysteries.  Yes, that Eric Raymond.
   >
   >    http://www.catb.org/~esr/terminfo/questions.html
   >
   > Send him some email.  He was looking specifically for the
   > Direct 800, but perhaps the Direct 825 would do.

Thanks for the reply, Richard.  It appears that contacting Eric
would prove fairly fruitless.  Judging by his web site, it seems
that he's about as unfamiliar with 'Direct' brand terminals as
I am. :)

   > Seriously, I myself have never seen any model terminal from
   > Direct. Perhaps you could look inside the case and see if
   > there are any clues of it being a rebadged variant product of
   > some other vendor?

The inside of the case is date-stamped 12/27/83.

The guts consist of:

  - A power supply built on a circuit board which is partially
    surrounded by a perforated metal cage.  The power supply
    board is branded 'Direct Inc.'

  - a mainboard which plugs into one of two available vertical
    slots (76 contacts).  The second slot is empty.

    No brand markings on the mainboard, although the board's
    physical shape is sufficiently distinctive to indicate that
    it was custom-designed to fit the Direct case...which is
    of a "luggable" configuration, very similar to an Osborne
    'Executive' or a Kaypro CP/M computer.  The keyboard is
    attached to the case with detachable hinges, and folds down
    for use.

  - a video sub-assembly (CRT and HV supply) which is branded
    'Korea Data System Corp' model LR51826.

The Direct 825 is a text terminal with a green-phosphor mono-
chrome screen.  It has two access ports; one labelled 'COMM,'
which is a serial port, and one labelled 'AUX,' which might
be a printer port.  The unit has 16K of memory.

The internal 'Setup' menu has many options, most of which I'm
not familar with.  The unit supports data rates from 150 to
19200 bps.  CTRL-S saves the set-up to non-volatile memory.

The keyboard has no LEDs, and eight programmable function keys
(marked PF1, PF2, etc.).  Sending the sequence ESC 'j' to the
terminal activates an on-screen menu for custom-programming
these function keys.

The terminal has an extended character set consisting of
various glyphs and box-drawing characters.  Sending the
character 0Eh (14 decimal) to the terminal activates the
extended character set; sending 0Fh (15 decimal) cancels
extended characters.

I've built a null-modem cable, and am able to "talk" back
and forth between the terminal and a DOS-based PC, using a
small program that I wrote specifically for that purpose.

This has allowed me to discover a number of control sequences
to which the terminal responds.  However, trying to dope out
the terminal's entire repertoire of control sequences by trial-
and error is an impossible task.

Perhaps the behavior I described above, concerning activa-
tion/cancellation of the extended character set, suggests a
particular VT emulation...?

Although I'm an experienced utilities/small apps programmer
for the PC, and am fairly knowledgeable about PC hardware,
the whole arena of terminals is new to me.

So any insights would be appreciated.  Thanks.


 ..............................................................................

Newsgroups: comp.terminals
References: <rshu_20040707000001@stratagy.com>
    <ccgc3p$1fns$1@news.wplus.net>
Message-ID: <10eo4mdp2prbmd7@corp.supernews.com>
Date: Wed, 07 Jul 2004 15:12:13 -0000
From: Thomas Dickey <dickey@saltmine.radix.net>
Subject: Re: Direct 825 Terminal

Anonymous Guy <anonymous@bogus-address.com> wrote:

> The terminal has an extended character set consisting of
> various glyphs and box-drawing characters.  Sending the
> character 0Eh (14 decimal) to the terminal activates the
> extended character set; sending 0Fh (15 decimal) cancels
> extended characters.

...

> This has allowed me to discover a number of control sequences
> to which the terminal responds.  However, trying to dope out
> the terminal's entire repertoire of control sequences by trial-
> and error is an impossible task.

;-)

> Perhaps the behavior I described above, concerning activa-
> tion/cancellation of the extended character set, suggests a
> particular VT emulation...?

vt100 (though the comment regarding vt52 is confusing, since a
vt100 wouldn't respond to vt52's controls without switching modes).

-- 
Thomas E. Dickey
http://invisible-island.net/
 ftp://invisible-island.net/

 ..............................................................................

Newsgroups: comp.terminals
References: <10eo4mdp2prbmd7@corp.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <cchnd3$247e$1@news.wplus.net>
Date: Wed, 7 Jul 2004 20:45:27 +0000 (UTC)
From: Anonymous Guy <anonymous@bogus-address.com>
Subject: Re: Direct 825 Terminal

On 2004-07-07 dickey@saltmine.radix.net said:

   > Anonymous Guy wrote:
   >
   >   [ ... snip ... ]
   >
   > > Perhaps the behavior I described above, concerning activa-
   > > tion/cancellation of the extended character set, suggests a
   > > particular VT emulation...?
   >
   > vt100 (though the comment regarding vt52 is confusing, since a
   > vt100 wouldn't respond to vt52's controls without switching modes).

I haven't yet discovered any indication that the terminal is
capable of switching VT emulation modes.  It might have that
capacity, but if so, it isn't obvious.

Still, given the age of the unit, VT100 sounds reasonable.
I'll go snag the VT100 command set from the Web, and start
testing.  Thanks.

When I come up with some definitive answers, I'll e-mail Eric Raymond. :)

 ..............................................................................

Newsgroups: comp.terminals, comp.unix.programmer
References: <ccfa1v$juv$1@nsnmpen3-gest.nuria.telefonica-data.net>
    <rshu_20040707000001@stratagy.com>
Message-ID: <rshu_20040707173003@stratagy.com>
Organization: The Late, Great Stratagy Users Group
Date: Wed, 7 Jul 2004 17:30:03 -0400 (EDT)
From: Richard S. Shuford <shuford*list.stratagy.com>
Subject: Re: Direct 825 Terminal

Anonymous Guy responded:
> 
> It appears that contacting Eric [Raymond] would prove fairly fruitless.
> Judging by his web site, it seems that he's about as unfamiliar with
> 'Direct' brand terminals as I am. :)


Though Eric may be personally unfamiliar, yet he has accumulated a clue
or two in his inventory.  A certain core of information about control
sequences of a Direct terminal is available in an entry in Eric's
comprehensive terminfo/termcap database:

    http://www.catb.org/~esr/terminfo/

(At this writing, the termcap file is Version 11.0.1, from 2000-03-02.)

Probably the credit goes to one of the early nameless contributors to the
termcap database, but the following entry (excerpted from Eric's file)
may help you get off the ground in using your Direct 825.


# The d800 was an early portable terminal from c.1984-85 that looked a lot
# like the original Compaq `lunchbox' portable (but no handle).  It had a vt220
# mode (which is what this entry looks like) and several other lesser-known
# emulations.
d800|Direct 800/A:\
        :am:bs:da:db:ms:xs:\
        :co#80:it#8:li#24:\
        :ac=``a1fxgqh0jYk?lZm@nEooppqDrrsstCu4vAwBx3yyzz{{||}}~~:\
        :ae=\E[m:as=\E[1m:bl=^G:cd=\E[J:ce=\E[K:cl=\E[1;1H\E[2J:\
        :cm=\E[%i%d;%dH:cr=^M:do=^J:k1=\EOP:k2=\EOQ:k3=\EOR:\
        :k4=\EOS:k5=\EOT:k6=\EOU:k7=\EOV:k8=\EOW:kd=\E[B:kl=\E[D:\
        :kr=\E[C:ku=\E[A:le=^H:me=\E[m:nd=\E[C:se=\E[m:sf=\ED:\
        :so=\E[7m:sr=\EM:ta=^I:ue=\E[m:up=\E[A:us=\E[4m:ve=\E[>12h:\
        :vs=\E[>12l:


Other than Eric, another source of information is Sun Microsystems,
which (in its supported terminfo database provided with Solaris 9)
supplies the following entry containing the core set of control
sequences of the Direct 800 (under three aliases):


% infocmp direct
#       Reconstructed via infocmp from file: /usr/share/lib/terminfo/d/direct
d800|direct|direct800|direct 800/a,
        am, da, db, msgr, xhp,
        cols#80, lines#24, ma#1,
        bel=^G, clear=\E[1;1H\E[2J, cnorm=\E[>12h, cr=\r,
        cub1=\b, cud1=\n, cuf1=\E[C, cup=\E[%i%p1%d;%p2%dH,
        cuu1=\E[A, cvvis=\E[>12l, ed=\E[J, el=\E[K, ht=\t,
        ind=\n, kcub1=\E[D, kcud1=\E[B, kcuf1=\E[C,
        kcuu1=\E[A, kf1=\EOP, kf2=\EOQ, kf3=\EOR, kf4=\EOS,
        kf5=\EOT, kf6=\EOU, kf7=\EOV, kf8=\EOW, ri=\EM,
        rmacs=\E[0m, rmso=\E[0m, rmul=\E[0m, smacs=\E[1m,
        smso=\E[7m, smul=\E[4m,


If you don't know how to read the termcap or terminfo entries, you
can consult this book:

    "termcap and terminfo"
    by John Strang, Linda Mui, and Tim O'Reilly
    3rd Edition April 1988 
    ISBN: 0-937175-22-6
    269 pages, $29.95 US, $43.95 CA, £20.95 UK 

    http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/term/

Other related information is accessible here:

    http://www.cs.utk.edu/~shuford/terminal/general_info.html#terminfo


> The terminal has an extended character set consisting of
> various glyphs and box-drawing characters.  Sending the
> character 0Eh (14 decimal) to the terminal activates the
> extended character set; sending 0Fh (15 decimal) cancels
> extended characters.
> ...
> Perhaps the behavior I described above, concerning activa-
> tion/cancellation of the extended character set, suggests a
> particular VT emulation...?


I'm afraid that this behavior doesn't tell us anything about the
Escape sequences; all you are doing is using Shift-In/Shift-Out
to switch the character-set mapping between G0 and G1.  See:

    http://www.cs.utk.edu/~shuford/terminal/dec_mcs_char_set_news.txt
    http://www.cs.utk.edu/~shuford/terminal/character_set_news.txt

 ...RSS

-- 
Have a cow, man!
http://www.stonyfield.com/HaveACow/

 ..............................................................................

Newsgroups: comp.terminals
References: <10eo4mdp2prbmd7@corp.supernews.com>
    <cchnd3$247e$1@news.wplus.net>
Message-ID: <10eq4tlg74tgs4c@corp.supernews.com>
Date: Thu, 08 Jul 2004 09:28:21 -0000
From: Thomas Dickey <dickey@saltmine.radix.net>
Subject: Re: Direct 825 Terminal

Anonymous Guy <anonymous@bogus-address.com> wrote:

> Still, given the age of the unit, VT100 sounds reasonable.
> I'll go snag the VT100 command set from the Web, and start
> testing.  Thanks.

> When I come up with some definitive answers, I'll e-mail
> Eric Raymond. :)

Eric hasn't updated his terminfo for more than 3 years.

You might simply want to post the results to this newsgroup (I collect
information for ncurses).

The current version of ncurses is 5.4 (20040208)
There's an faq at

	http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses.faq.html

-- 
Thomas E. Dickey
http://invisible-island.net/
 ftp://invisible-island.net/

 ..............................................................................

Newsgroups: comp.terminals, comp.unix.programmer
References: <rshu_20040707173003@stratagy.com>
Message-ID: <cchv86$9uk$1@news.wplus.net>
Date: Wed, 7 Jul 2004 22:59:21 +0000 (UTC)
From: Anonymous Guy <anonymous@bogus-address.com>
Subject: Re: Direct 825 Terminal

On 2004-07-07 shuford*list.stratagy.com said:

   > Though Eric may be personally unfamiliar, yet he has accumulated a
   > clue or two in his inventory.  A certain core of information about
   > control sequences of a Direct terminal is available in an entry in
   > Eric's comprehensive terminfo/termcap database:
   > http://www.catb.org/~esr/terminfo/

   > ... but the following entry...may help you get off the ground...
   > ...
   > If you don't know how to read the termcap or terminfo entries,
   > you can consult this book:
   > ....

No problem; I can decipher it.

This is all very helpful!  Thanks a lot, Richard.  Your
efforts are much appreciated.  I owe you one...or two...
or three... :)

BTW, about 12 years ago, I did see one other 'Direct'
brand terminal.  Don't recall the model number, but it
seemed a bit fancier than the 825.  It had a second circuit
board plugged into the second internal slot; had 64K RAM,
and a nice-looking light-cyan-colored monochrome screen.

Maybe that was the model 800; don't know.

In any case, the Direct terminal is a pretty solid little
self-contained, luggable unit.  Certainly worth the $1.00
I paid for it.

Thanks again!


 ..............................................................................

Newsgroups: comp.terminals, comp.unix.programmer
References: <ccfa1v$juv$1@nsnmpen3-gest.nuria.telefonica-data.net>
    <rshu_20040707000001@stratagy.com> <rshu_20040707173003@stratagy.com>
Message-ID: <aiuoe01uem7kng8r329r5m7vhe1cnaofqv@4ax.com>
Organization: Balmer Consulting
Date: Wed, 07 Jul 2004 15:34:53 -0700
From: Alan Balmer <albalmer@att.net>
Subject: Re: Direct 825 Terminal

On Wed, 7 Jul 2004 17:30:03 -0400 (EDT), "Richard S. Shuford"
<shuford*list.stratagy.com> wrote:

>
># The d800 was an early portable terminal from c.1984-85 that looked a lot
># like the original Compaq `lunchbox' portable (but no handle).  It had a vt220
># mode (which is what this entry looks like) and several other lesser-known
># emulations.

The OP might want to post a query in alt.folklore.computers. There's a
lot of expertise on old equipment there.

-- 
Al Balmer
Balmer Consulting
balmerconsultingthis*att.net

 //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

