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From: john@uw-nsr.UUCP (John Sambrook)
Newsgroups: comp.terminals
Subject: Problems with Zenith Z-49 terminals?
Message-ID: <923@uw-nsr.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 23-Dec-86 23:51:22 EST
Article-I.D.: uw-nsr.923
Posted: Tue Dec 23 23:51:22 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 24-Dec-86 21:14:46 EST
Reply-To: john@uw-nsr.UUCP (John Sambrook 5-7433)
Distribution: na
Organization: UW-Bioengineering, Seattle, WA
Lines: 44
Keywords: Zenith, Z-49

I would be interested in hearing from anyone who has one or more
Zenith Z-49 terminals.  I have noticed what may be a problem and
would appreciate additional input from others on the net.

We recently received five new Z-49 terminals.  Having had nothing
but good success with Z-19's and Z-29's we didn't feel it necessary
to get a demonstration on our system before purchasing them.

To date I have noticed two problems.  First, the terminal seems 
much slower than our other -19's and -29's.  Putting a datascope
between the terminal and our computer system confirmed this.  
Lots of flow control going on.  However, I can live with this problem.

The second, more serious problem is that when listing a long file the 
terminal will eventually get into a state where it will overprint the 
last line for a to minute or so before it breaks free and resumes 
normal operation.  Sometimes it never breaks out of this mode and it
is necessary to cycle the power on the terminal.  While hard to 
describe the behavior looks a lot like a regular line printer with 
a paper jam. 

The problem occurs regularly at 9600 baud and somewhat less frequently
at 4800 baud.  Software handshaking is enabled.  The problem can be
demonstrated by cat'ing a long file such as /usr/spool/uucp/LOGFILE.

While I first thought that it was something unique to our system I 
no longer believe this to be the case.  A few days ago one of the 
people I work with reported seeing the same behavior on some Z-49
terminals connected to another system in our department.  

Our local terminal people feel that we have some early revision ROM's.
They gave me the numbers for the latest ROMs and we do indeed have these
ROMs installed.  I tried to contact Walt Hanza (sp?) at Zenith Data Systems
but he has yet to return my (four, to date) calls :-(

To close, if you have any information on this problem that you feel 
might be useful I would appreciate hearing from you.  If there is any
interest I will summarize to the net.

Thanks,

-- 
John Sambrook                           Work: (206) 545-7433
University of Washington WD-12          Home: (206) 487-0180
Seattle, Washington  98195              UUCP: uw-beaver!uw-nsr!john