[GreenKeys] Heavy Metal - ASR35 keyboard doesn't work like I want it to...

[Bryan Brodie]

Gil,

Thanks - especially for the Terminal by Bray software. I think I will
be able to do the fundamental checking with that program. When I
received this machine from George Hutchinson, it had the switchboard
type plugs, and I cut them off and connected them to the current loop
converter.

All of the wires coming out of the TTY are colored black, and there
are more of them than places to plug input on the current loop
converter. I had to play around quite a bit to get text to print, and
I have also noticed that the TTY works a lot better after an hour of
being plugged in and warmed up.

The HeavyMetal program supports ascii and baudot just fine - the later
versions have the telnet capability removed, since I imagine few
people use teletypes as TTY devices in a telnet session anymore.

The "tricky" part about telnet and COM1 is that the terminal software
wants to "dial out" (such as it is) to another computer, and what I am
trying to do is "dial in" using the TTY connected to the COM1 port
into a telnet session running on the same PC.

When terminal software is accessing the COM1 port, there is to way to
forward my text to a telnet session running on the same machine.

HeavyMetal does this in one direction (computer -> TTY printer) but
not TTY KB -> computer.

I am not using any ethernet-to-232 gizmos, but that may be my next
plan of attack if your suggestions don't work for me.

Again, the indicators on the current loop converter show data flowing
in both directions (printing and typing) but my typing does not echo
back to the TTY printer or to the terminal session.

I'll let you know how it turns out. Thanks for the tips.

Bryan

On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 4:40 PM,  <gil at baudot.net> wrote:
> Hi Bryan:
>
> Well, this is a question for Buzbee I suppose, but I'll add my 2 cents.
> Since that 35 is an ascii machine, you don't need the baudot conversion
> provided by HeavyMetal -- I didn't know it had an ascii mode, but I
> suppose it does if you can print to your 35.
>
> What happens when you just run an ascii terminal emulator?  You can use
> the confusing and buggy HyperTerminal that comes with winblows, or you
> can grab the nice little "Terminal by Bray" shareware app, which I
> happen to have at:
> http://www.vauxelectronics.com/misc/Terminal-by-Bray.zip
> This guy did a nice job;  it is a clean terminal, which has separate RX
> and TX windows, and all the config stuff visible.  The only odd thing I
> ran across was that you should check the "Auto-connect" box, so it
> connects to the com port when opened (should be the default), and I
> think you need to click in the tx window before typing.  Other than
> these minor things, it is a very nice terminal.  Win HyperTerminal, on
> the other hand, has all sorts of legacy BBS dial-up crap still in it,
> has been buggy since day one (set xon/xoff flow control or you tx chars
> may come out 3 seconds apart), and does not echo typed chars until you
> enable that in "ascii options" or someplace.
>
> But all that aside, when you run a terminal, at 110-baud, and connect
> your com port to your 35's 232-converter gizmo, can you type in the
> terminal and have the 35 print, and type on the 35 keyboard and have the
> terminal show your chars?  This is kinda the fundamental test.  Are you
> running into some parity issue that allows print but not input?  Try
> none/mark/space/odd/even to see if it makes a difference.  Someone here
> likely knows the 35 better than I do, but I seem to recall that on the
> 33, the keyboard produced mark or even parity (IIRC), while the printer
> didn't care -- your 35 issue might be along the same lines.
>
> The other thing you could try is to hang a separate PC/terminal-emulator
> in place of your 232-adapter/M35 machine, and see what is being sent and
> received using your HeavyMetal session.  Again, it could just be a
> keyboard parity issue.  If you try this, keep in mind that you probably
> need to swap the 232 rx/tx lines -- a null-modem adapter is handy for
> fixing this (swapping pins 2 and 3).
>
> Once you get the basic ascii communication stuff figured out, you can
> try a telnet session instead of a direct com port test.  I'm not quite
> sure what you want to do though.  If you have an ethernet-to-232 gizmo
> connected to your 232-adapter/M35, then you should be able to use any
> telnet software to connect a session to the ethernet
> address/port-number, and then send and receive text just as if you had a
> direct terminal connection.  You can use HyperTerminal in telnet mode
> omehow, though I have never done it.  You can also do a
> Start/Run/Command (to get a dos) window and then telnet someplace.
>
> FWIW,
>
> gil