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From: heuring@boulder.UUCP (Vincent Heuring)
Newsgroups: net.micro.apple
Subject: IIe Termcap; Bug in the 80 Col Monitor.
Message-ID: <287@boulder.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 17-Jan-85 17:35:46 EST
Article-I.D.: boulder.287
Posted: Thu Jan 17 17:35:46 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 21-Jan-85 03:08:49 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Lines: 40


I:   Does *ANYBODY* have a termcap for the IIe with the Apple 80 column
board? Please reply via this newsgroup.

II:  (FLAME) I have been using my IIe to communicate with our local system at
1200 baud for a year now, and have had real frustrations with
the slowness of the Apple Monitor. I need to pad linefeeds with
three nulls to keep the monitor from dropping one to three characters
at the beginning of lines. I have been using the Apple SuperSerial
card, and could find no way around the problem. This is not a particularly
big problem if one communicates with only one or two systems, but
became a real hassle when dealing with a number of different ones:
VAX/Unix, VAX/vms, Cyber, Lockheed Dialog, etc.
I have been phoning the Apple hotline about this every few months, trying
to get a) a straight answer,and b) a solution to my problem.  The first
few calls resulted in answers of "I don't know," "It must be your
software," (stupid answer) "maybe it's the modem," (another stupid answer)
etc etc. Finally, a few months ago, one of the guys admitted that it
was the monitor program on the 80 col. card ( a straight answer), but his
(non)solution was to hang around the local computer store and wait for
an upgrade that might appear some year. arghhhhhh.
First, the types that populate most computer stores are hostile to
any question except "Can I buy a Lisa if I pay full price?"
And second, most of them have the technical smarts of a planarian worm.

What is most irritating about this is an attitude on the part of
the customer service people that if there is no currently available
fix to the problem, that the problem isn't a problem, it is an
undocumented feature.

I like Apple, and I think they are good for the industry; but let's not
confuse them with a *real* computer vendor, that gets on bugs, has a real
field service organization, etc.  Oh, by the way, if anybody does have
a fix for the monitor problem, I would appreciate hearing about it.



V. Heuring
Electrical and Computer Engineering Dep't.
University of Colorado - Boulder.