> I was wondering if a PC Terminal is what I want.  My project uses
> a PC running a terminal emulator, for inputting data and displaying
> data, through the serial port. That is all.

If I recall correctly, there was a terminal designed specifically
for very cost sensitive multi-user PC applications.  This was when
PCs were still expensive and network hardware was expensive.  A
regular PC hosted the actual program.  That PC had serial lines
that connected to terminals which used PC-Terminal protocol.

PC-Terminal protocol was similar to VT-100, ADM-3, etc terminal
protocols.  Display side was "normal".  You sent escape sequences
to position cursor, clear screen, set mode (blink, reverse, etc),
etc.  Characters encoding was same as the internal PC encoding.

Big difference was that PC-Terminal keyboard didn't send ASCII
characters back to the host PC.  It sent PC keyboard scan codes.
In some ways, this simplified programming the host PC to handle
multiple processes & deal with outlying terminals as "dumb" PCs.

The whole setup was like a tiny mainframe setup; central host
system, remote terminals, vendor proprietary communications
protocol, etc.

I think some of the PC UNIX variants supported PC-Terminals too
(as another terminal type).


> If I were to get a PC Terminal, would it do the same thing? I just
> hook up a keyboard & display, connect the serial port and off I go?

A PC-Terminal was a terminal with keyboard, display, & serial port.
If you used it, you'd have to decode the input stream from PC key
codes to ASCII characters.  Probably extra work you don't need.

I'd stick with any ubiquitous terminal that followed DEC VT-100
protocol and sent a common ASCII character when you pressed a key
on the keyboard.

                                                Lee Jones

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