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The Encore HostStation 110 is a terminal with a large monitor in
landscape orientation; the screen resolution is 1056H x 800V. The
keyboard is identical to the DEC VT220 layout, and the internal
processor is a National Semiconductor 32016. Quantity-one price is
$3995.
Encore originally offered a similar 100 model without windowing
features, and a workstation running Unix from a 40Mb disk, both in the
same box as the 110, which fits comfortably on a desktop. Regrettably,
both these products have been dropped.
The terminal has one 9-pin and two 25-pin serial ports, allowing
support of two host computers and a mouse, or three host computers.
The ports support data rates of 110 to 38400 baud.
The screen can be split into four windows, each of which can be
connected to any of the serial ports. A single dedicated key in the
upper function key row switches from one window to the next.
The HS110 supports ANSI, DEC VT220, VT100, Regis, and Tektronix
emulation, and all parameters are selected by a convenient menu display
on the bottom of the screen. Screen contents are preserved when setup
mode is selected and deselected, except when the font is changed.
There are six resident character sets:
Large 88H x 50V
EM100W 105H x 42V
EM100N 176H x 42V
Small 264H x 142V
Ledger 176H x 106V
Std 132H x 71V
In three months of daily use of this terminal, I have almost always
used the Large character set, which gives double the normal
alphanumeric terminal screen contents. The characters are large and
very readable, especially displayed black on a white background.
Downloaded fonts are supported, but only in a small Regis character
box. This makes it impossible to use this terminal for TeX typesetting
previewing, which is my greatest disappointment with it. It does
support bitmap downloading, but the data volume is too great to make
this a viable approach.
I have used the terminal extensively in Tektronix graphics mode.
Unlike the DEC terminals and most VT100 and VT220 emulators, the HS110
has no trouble keeping up a 9600 baud without flow control enabled.
The only apparent software bug that I have observed is that Tektronix
mode can only be entered from setup mode, or by a special escape
sequence from the host, but not by <ESC><FF>, the Tektronix screen
clear sequence which most other vendors use to enter Tektronix mode.
Once entered, it can be reset to alphanumeric mode only from setup
mode. A host escape sequence to switch back to HS110 mode is ignored.
In vector drawing speed comparisons with the Intecolor VHR-19 (which
uses the NEC graphics display controller chips), the HS110 runs about
10% faster, which is remarkable in that it is using a conventional
microprocessor for all its work. It does not appear that horizontal
and vertical lines are drawn more rapidly than diagonal lines; if that
is indeed the case, then perhaps there is room for further code
optimization, since special case coding for horizontal lines should be
able to achieve a speed-up of 32, and vertical lines should be drawn
somewhat faster than diagonal lines.
Tektronix mode is available in a full screen display, as well as in two
half-size side-by-side displays. That may be useful for comparing
plots.
In summary, this is indeed a fine terminal, and I have no hesitation in
recommending it. It is outstanding for graphics use, for users with
impaired vision, and for people who need to have one terminal
communicating simultaneously with two or three hosts. My strongest
wish for it is for downloaded font support, because it could make a
very fine TeX typeset output preview station.