Xref: utzoo comp.terminals:759 comp.sys.att:3584 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!vsi!friedl From: friedl@vsi.UUCP (Stephen J. Friedl) Newsgroups: comp.terminals,comp.sys.att Subject: Info about the AT&T 620 terminal Message-ID: <727@vsi.UUCP> Date: 24 Jun 88 05:12:52 GMT Distribution: comp Organization: V-Systems, Inc. -- Santa Ana, CA Lines: 40 Hi folks, For those interested, here is a mini-review of the AT&T 620 terminal. It has a mouse, bitmapped graphics, and a couple of windows that the 3B2 knows how to drive in the layers environment. We had one of these on loan from a customer for a while and got to know it "well". In short, these are pretty sorry terminals. The blink and dim attributes don't work (confirmed with Hotline), and the terminal only does pseudo 132-column mode. You see 80 of the 132 columns it maintains internally -- you can "scroll" sideways to get the ones you can't see. The terminal scrolls horridly. It paints the screen OK, but when it hits the bottom, it becomes obvious that the processor is doing characters on a pixel basis because the movement "shimmers" down the screen as the bits are moved. It is not anything like smooth scroll, and the effect is really terrible (can you say "BLIT"? Neither can the 620). I did some tests and find that timing the dump of a dozen /etc/termcap files shows around 3100bps throughput. I didn't have the right windows/layers software loaded on my 3B2, so I can't judge that (the 615's multi-tasking is so sluggish on an unloaded 3B2/400 that we really can't use it). My customer runs Ficor Autograph (in Tek 4014 mode, probably) and really likes it. However, I've seen graphics on the Wyse 99GT looking just as good for one third the price (the 99's are really nice terminals). Feedback is welcome. Steve -- Steve Friedl V-Systems, Inc. (714) 545-6442 3B2-kind-of-guy friedl@vsi.com {backbones}!vsi.com!friedl attmail!vsi!friedl Nancy Reagan on the Mac-II architecture: "Just say Nu"