This is a feature of vi.   If the baud rate is perceived to be at or less than a specific value (1200 IIRC) the screen is set to 8 lines at a time to keep repainting low. 

This was useful on dialup lines.  

Since you have a virtual serial port the baud rate has no bearing other than upper level applications trying to make inferences about the environment such as this. 

If you set the baud rate to 19200 or 38400 (EXTA and EXTB in the virgin V7 code base) those were the fastest serial speeds in those days. So any SW should infer the ‘best’ behavior.


Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be almost but not quite. 

On Nov 4, 2017, at 9:34 PM, William Corcoran <wlc@jctaylor.com> wrote:


I had a similar issue with BSD 2.11. 
So, I hope this helps. 

You can use vt100.   However, make sure your baud rate is 9600.

stty 9600

(SIMH makes the virtual adjustment so you don’t need to worry about SIMH settings.)

I am using BSD 2.11 on a Mac with SIMH.  I noticed the console port would have a short window.   But, logging into dz ports were fine.   Setting the console baud rate to match the dz11 settings fixed the issue.

So, I suspect either a setting in vi that changes the window size on slow devices or it’s hard coded somewhere.  I will take a look. 

Truly,

Bill Corcoran


On Nov 5, 2017, at 12:03 AM, Will Senn <will.senn@gmail.com> wrote:

What should I set TERM to on V8 to get the best results on my Mac Terminal. If I set it to vt52, vt100, or vt132, only 8 lines appear at the bottom of the terminal window (of about 24 lines):

---

root::0:4:m0130,m322:/:
daemon:x:1:1:m0000,m000:/:
sys:sorry:2:1:m0130,m322:/usr/sys:no-login
bin:sorry:3:4:m0130,m322:/bin:
ken:sorry:6:1:m0130,m322:/usr/ken:
dmr:sorry:7:4:mh1092,m069:/usr/dmr:
nuucp::238:1:mh2019,m285,uucp:/usr/spool/uucppublic:/usr/lib/uucp/uucico
uucp::48:1:mh2019,m285,nowitz:/usr/lib/uucp:
"passwd" 20 lines, 770 characters
----

The 8 line window works about like I'd expect - the arrow keys move up and down until the screen needs to scroll, then B's and A's show up. I'm used to that on BSD. Using the j and k keys work better and when I scroll down enough lines, the lines move up to fill the whole terminal window and the file can be edited in the full window. Is there a better TERM setting that will get 24 lines to show up on file open?

Thanks,

Will

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