Real VT102 emulation with MAME (2020)

The author mentions problems with flow control, but I&#x27;m fairly certain I got that working in MAME. If I remember correctly, you need to enable XON&#x2F;XOFF in the VT102 configuration (it&#x27;s one of the bits you can toggle on the SET-UP B page), and also enable it in MAME&#x27;s Machine Configuration menu.<p>Also make sure your modem settings in MAME match the settings configured on the VT102. I have them both set to 19200 baud 8N1. I&#x27;ve just done a quick test now, and I can definitely make it through tests 1 and 2 in vttest without the output getting corrupted.<p>I should also mention that I&#x27;ve got the RS232 device set to null_modem (which is hooked up to a socat instance via MAME&#x27;s bitbanger feature), rather than the pty configuration that they&#x27;re using. I&#x27;m not sure if that could make a difference to the way the flow control works.

&gt; To use a MAME-emulated VT102, you’ll need a couple of things:<p>&gt; A copy of the VT102 firmware ROM<p>I&#x27;ve known for a long time that &quot;terminal emulators&quot; are software emulators of hardware terminals, but until now it never occurred to me that those hardware terminals might have <i>still</i> been largely software constructs.

I&#x27;ve used something similar to get MAME&#x27;s VT240 to talk to a WSL instance. Had to go dig up a forum post I wrote a few years back to find the exact commands.<p>On the WSL Linux side: socat -d -d exec:&#x27;bash -li&#x27;,pty,stderr,setsid,sigint,sane TCP-LISTEN:11313,reuseaddr,fork<p>On the Windows side: .\mame.exe vt240 -window -host null_modem -bitb socket.10.0.0.2:11313

I’d connect this to a pi running pdp-11 emulation. Now you’re back in 1982 land.

&gt; Unfortunately, the emulated VT102 is not connected through a real serial port, it’s connected through a PTY which (at least compared to what the VT102 expects) is basically infinitely fast.<p>I’ve thought before that you could have a couple of USB-to-RS232 adapters and connect them together?<p>What Linux needs is a real virtual serial driver. PTY isn’t it because it doesn’t fully emulate lower level aspects of RS-232 - it behaves differently from “connecting two RS-232 ports together”

Did they get graphics working? I think it would be the 125, at least, but the 100 line is complicated, IIRC.

I do not miss working on the VT102. The keyboards were terrible.

Have they got an AT&amp;T gnot terminal running?