Wayne wrote:
Oh Geez. "Term program". There's something I had thankfully resigned to an 80's dumpster memory, along with zip memory and dot matrix printers.
Hmm, don't say that to people working in the networking business.. Most active network devices are configured initially through an RS-232 port using a terminal program.
Also, many servers (sun, ibm, hp) are still initially configured through an RS-232 port via a terminal / terminal program. (no graphics card / keyboard in a unix server usually)
After you have everything running, you can telnet / ssh in, of course.. Until they stop at the firmware prompt, because your boot disk is missing, or something happened and it couldn't go multiuser. Time to plug your cable into the RS-232 port.. Of course most people use terminal servers for this, telnettable boxes that have many rs-232 ports that connect to the console ports of the servers.
That brings to mind: ssh and telnet-style programs are terminal programs, if they open their own window to display what happens on the remote machine (like is the case if you're running something other than a Unix flavour).. So is xterm, dtterm, gterm, kterm, and what have you..
The Windows command prompt emulates an ANSI terminal to some extent too, like does the Amiga's CON window. :-)
Whoops! Suddenly terminal programs are all around you, even though not all of them talk to a serial port..
They're far from dead, my friend. :-D