[lug] [OT!] Help with rsx/DEC

[rm at fabula.de]

On Mon, Apr 04, 2005 at 10:55:17AM -0600, D. Stimits wrote:
> rm at fabula.de wrote:
> >Hello list,
> >
> >mostly OT (but Linux is involved on the client side):
> >A friend of mine needs to write some code that interacts with
> >a PDP11 runninf RSX via telnet. At some point someone seems to have 
> >adapted the application in such a way that it will react to keyboard
> >input from a (remote) PC keyboard as if it where a VT100 keyboard
> >(so PGUp et al. will do "the right thing"). This only happens when
> 
> It sounds like it is a curses/ncurses app, though I've never heard of 
> the app. FYI, any shell (xterm, konsole, regular console, etc) should 
> have an environment variable $TERM, which children would inherit unless 
> the child specifically alters it. What does "echo $TERM" show from a 
> terminal that fails? Perhaps one of the app or client was hard coded to 
> a single term type.

Hmm, maybe i wasn't clear at all: this is from times way before curses :-)
Actually, RSX is from times way before common Unix (remember: we talk PDP11
here). The application is written in asembler (no source code, i'm affraid).
And of course no real "shell". When you login (^C-Enter and then 'HELLO')
you're interacting with a "task dispatcher"  where you can start tasks. This
is not like a modern shell - all started tasks will execute in the background.
This is the (living) neolithicum of multitasking environments.

> >accessed via telnet so it most likely is a "feature" of the telnet
> >application. Unfortunately no one has any clue about the exact mapping
> >of keys. So the big question is: where are such key mappings defined 
> >in RSX? (is there something like termcap/terminfo). My first guess
> >was that the server sends the usual ^e (terminal enquire) but this
> >doesn't happen. 
> 
> If you could run ldd on the client side on linux you might get some 
> clues via the libs it is linked to...e.g., libncurses, or libtermcap. 
> FYI, you can also run ldd on the libraries themselves and see what libs 
> the libs are linked to in the long chain.

No Linux client - only telnet access. From my undertanding the culprit part
must be the tenlnet "server"/task. From a (serial) console attached to the
box everything works as expected, when the same escape sequences are sent from
a (perl) app. via telnet the application gets all messed up.

So the question would rather be: anyone with RSX experience knows how/where to
configure the telnet server task?


 Thanks RalfD

> D. Stimits, stimits AT comcast DOT net
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