5 May
2020
5 May
'20
3:44 p.m.
On May 4, 2020, at 6:29 PM, Thomas DeBellis
<tommytimesharing at gmail.com> wrote:
...
Right now, I'm working on SETHOST, which is a client for the earlier NRT protocol
(Network Remote Terminal) that predates CTERM on the 36 bit platform. It's more
efficient than CTERM (I have yet to compare it with LAT) and will do certain things that I
like that the Tops-20 implementation of CTERM doesn't.
FWIW: it makes sense that NRT works better than CTERM for TOPS-20. The same would be true
for RSTS if it implemented CTERM at all, which it doesn't. (Two reasons for that: (1)
the vast complexity of CTERM, (2) the fact that RSTS was told not to by management who
didn't particularly care for RSTS's existence.)
While CTERM claims to be a general protocol, it's obvious by inspection that it is
really a generalization of the RSX/VMS style of terminal I/O, which is rather different
from that of RSTS, TOPS-10, or TOPS-20. So implementing CTERM on those amounts to an
exercise in forcing the native OS terminal semantics through what amounts to a VMS
terminal QIO API.
paul