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From: jhs@MITRE-BEDFORD.ARPA
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.8bit
Subject: good modem program
Message-ID: <8707111641.AA13792@mitre-bedford.ARPA>
Date: Sat, 11-Jul-87 12:41:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: mitre-be.8707111641.AA13792
Posted: Sat Jul 11 12:41:15 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 15-Jul-87 00:57:33 EDT
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Larry :

There are several vt100 emulation options.  I'm running CDY Consulting's
"OmniCom" program, which requires CDY's OMNIVIEW chip O/S replacement.
This is commercial, and the combination costs around $50.  On the other hand,
for the $50 you also get an 80-column word processor and a general-purpose
80-column E: device which you can use in your own programming.  On the 800, I
think CDY nowadays throws in a board containing the "OMNIMON" resident
debugger program, which formerly sold for more than $50 by itself at one time
-- but contact CDY for details.  Anyway, OmniCom does a very complete vt100
emulation compared to the others for the 8-bit Atari, and has the following
features, many of which are missing from other emulators:

	> supports kermit, xmodem, and ASCII send from file / capture to file
	  (or to printer)

	> has online "Print Screen" function for capturing short messages,
	  e-mail addresses or other data on screen right to the printer

	> allows you to list directory contents when preparing to send
	  or receive a file -- you can check name of file to send or
	  verify it's on the disk you thought, or make sure name is not
	  already present when receiving.

I find OmniCom a real delight to use after running a couple of other terminal
emulators without all these features.

Then there is the ancient but honorable VT10SQ vt100 emulator.  It doesn't
support file transfer (at least the version I had did not) and also doesn't
interpret any graphics (line drawing) commands.  OmniCom does a lot more.
VT10SQ is, however, available as a Public Domain program.

More recently (in fact even as we speak) John Dunning has put together and is
currently enhancing a Public Domain port of kermit65 from the Commodore world
to the Atari.  It has several terminal emulation modes, one of which is a
vt100 in software, similar to VT10SQ but, like OmniCom, with a prettier
font on the screen.  It also has a 40-column mode and an 80-column mode in
40-column format with scrolling to show you the whole screen.

Any of the vt100 emulators that puts 80 columns on the screen must be used
with a monochrome TV set or monitor, or one of the color monitors that has a
separate chroma input (e.g. the Commodore color monitors).

-John Sangster / jhs@mitre-bedford.arpa