Hi, at http://www.coli.uni-saarland.de/~eric/stuff/soft/
 terminal-23apr2005.zip and terminal-rom.tar.gz
respectively, you can find updated versions of my small
TERMINAL. Features: 8088/8086 compatible, UPXed to less
than 4 kilobytes, built-in optimized ANSI/VT100 handling.

You can use TERMINAL to turn very slow old PCs into VT100
style terminals, or just to exchange a bit of data with
your modem or serial mouse for testing / debugging purposes.

The update fixes a bug which made it impossible to select
other serial ports than the default one (highest installed
port, e.g. if you have COM1 and COM2, then COM2 is default).
Strange that nobody reported that in the last 3.5 years...

While creating the updated ROM version, I noticed that the
loader can handle not only com files but also LZSS compressed
files. As I was not sure whether the loader defaulted to
"copy to RAM, then run", I used the uncompressed TERMINAL for
the ROM image. Still, 3 of the 8 kilobytes are free. To the
ROM experts: Does it make sense to provide a 5 kilobyte ROM
image? Or a 4 kilobyte one which uses the UPXed TERMINAL? If
so, could you create one for me? Please check the tar gz file
and figure out some nice compile time options (gcc or djgpp
needed as preprocessor, GNU make for the makefile, nasm to
compile the ROM loader and to compile the TERMINAL itself)  :-) .

Anyway. If you are no ROM guy, just get the ZIP with the DOS
program TERMINAL.com (3.8k) and be happy, now even in, uhm,
stereo (now properly supports COMn port selection).

Eric


PS: For extra convenience, the ROM version now supports
the "port number" q, which selects "no terminal, just
return to the caller (e.g. system BIOS) at once". The
old version made you fully enter terminal before leaving.