PowerTerm is a terminal emulator supporting the Telnet protocol and providing VT terminal emulation for access to legacy systems. PowerTerm 525 is part of the HP Pathworks 32 installation.

Web Site

There are several versions of PowerTerm available. PowerTerm 525, which comes with Pathworks 32, was reviewed for this article. Other commercial versions are referenced at https://www.ericom.com/terminal_emulator_windows/.

Overview

PowerTerm supports emulation of VT-series terminals from VT52 through VT525 along with other terminal types from IBM, DG, WYSE and others. It supports a variety of customizations allowing the display to be configured to the user's personal taste including:

• Screen size (number of rows and columns)
• Font size
• Text and background color

Other features supported include:

• Scroll-back buffer
• Printer support
• Scripting support

Communication

PowerTerm 525 supports 4 basic communication protocols.

• Telnet - standard Telnet protocol used for terminal communication with most systems. All data on the network is in plain-text which could be viewed by anyone with a network sniffer between the PC and the target server.
• Serial - user specified COM port and communication parameters
• LAT - used by DEC terminal servers
• CTERM - DECnet SET HOST

Other versions of PowerTerm may include support for the following protocols.

• Rlogin - execution of single commands and displaying the results
• SSH - an encrypted implementation of communication similar to Telnet. All communication cannot be viewed while on the network.
• SFTP - encrypted file transfers
• Kerberos authentication

Keyboard Mapping

Due to the diferences between the DEC VT series keyboards and the standard, and some not-so-standard, PC keyboards, terminal emulators must choose how to map many of the function and editing keys. By default, the backspace key is mapped to the DEC delete key.

The 6 editing keys on the VT series keyboards are:

Find	Insert	Remove
Select	Previous	Next

These keys are mapped to standard PC keyboard for these keys is:

Insert	Home	Page Up
Delete	End	Page Down

PowerTerm maps the editing keys based on key function. This maps the PC keys to the DEC VT keys as:

• Insert -> Insert
• Home -> Find
• Page Up -> Previous
• Delete -> Remove
• End -> Select
• Page Down -> Next

Remapping of any of the keys may be done with a graphical window providing drag-and-drop of the keys.

Function keys F1-F12 are mapped to the DEC VT function keys F1-F12. Alt F1 - Alt F10 on the PC keyboard are mapped to the DEC VT function keys F11-F20.