Author Topic: Best RS232 terminal?  (Read 18510 times)

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Offline ThelanieTopic starter

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Best RS232 terminal?
« on: February 24, 2020, 10:22:28 am »
Hello EEVblog.

I work as technician at the Danish meteorology institute and at my work we use an old program called Procomm Plus for communicating with our devices who use RS232 communication, my boss the other day was asking about if anyone knew a newer more modern program for communicating with RS232 hardware.. And i looked around a little on the internet and it seemed the best fit was Termite, does anyone have any experience with this? Or does anyone know of an amazing RS232 program? :P

I look forward to reading any advice or experiences you guys have had.

 

Online tunk

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Re: Best RS232 terminal?
« Reply #1 on: February 24, 2020, 10:31:48 am »
 
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Offline T3sl4co1l

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Re: Best RS232 terminal?
« Reply #2 on: February 24, 2020, 10:32:44 am »
PuTTY is a popular one, pretty basic.

Tim
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Online ebastler

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Re: Best RS232 terminal?
« Reply #3 on: February 24, 2020, 10:52:56 am »
Tera Term is pretty feature-rich, open source, and still in (somewhat) active development.
https://ttssh2.osdn.jp/
 

Offline fcb

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Re: Best RS232 terminal?
« Reply #4 on: February 24, 2020, 11:00:13 am »
Termite 3.4
PuTTy
https://electron.plus Power Analysers, VI Signature Testers, Voltage References, Picoammeters, Curve Tracers.
 

Offline Karel

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Re: Best RS232 terminal?
« Reply #5 on: February 24, 2020, 11:54:40 am »
 

Online nctnico

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Re: Best RS232 terminal?
« Reply #6 on: February 24, 2020, 12:15:37 pm »
Somehow I always gravitate back to Hyperterminal because of it's broad support of protocols, able to open & close a port and simplicity. In comparison Putty is very cumbersome to use and on Linux you can't reconfigure Putty on-the-fly which makes it very tedious to use.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Online Ranayna

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Re: Best RS232 terminal?
« Reply #7 on: February 24, 2020, 12:29:30 pm »
This topic reminds me of something that i was looking for some time ago.
I generally use putty for all my terminal needs, it has everything that i need and is easy to use.

But i have one big issue with it: Nowadays, those USB to RS232 adapters are often the only way of getting COM Ports. But under Windows, those do not always have the same COM port id assigned. In putty i either have to guess, or open device manager to get the actual COM port.

Does any of the alternatives listed here show a (refreshable) list of COM ports that are currently present in the system?
 

Online nctnico

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Re: Best RS232 terminal?
« Reply #8 on: February 24, 2020, 12:36:00 pm »
Hyperterminal does that too.
However I have asked the same question a long time ago and someone came up with a (paid) terminal program which seemed like a good alternative. Just can't find the bookmark right now  :rant:
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline oPossum

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Re: Best RS232 terminal?
« Reply #9 on: February 24, 2020, 12:44:15 pm »
Serial Port Notifier will show a list of available COM ports. Right click on the taskbar icon for the list. It also shows a popup when ports come and go.

https://helmpcb.com/software/serial-port-monitor
 

Online ebastler

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Re: Best RS232 terminal?
« Reply #10 on: February 24, 2020, 12:45:27 pm »
Somehow I always gravitate back to Hyperterminal

You pay(!) for Hyperterminal(!!) ?  :-\
 

Online nctnico

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Re: Best RS232 terminal?
« Reply #11 on: February 24, 2020, 01:17:17 pm »
Somehow I always gravitate back to Hyperterminal

You pay(!) for Hyperterminal(!!) ?  :-\
No. Still the one from Windowx XP (in a VM nowadays). Although I'm aware there is a paid version as well.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline Gyro

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Re: Best RS232 terminal?
« Reply #12 on: February 24, 2020, 01:22:01 pm »
'Terminal' works well for me...  https://sites.google.com/site/terminalbpp/
Best Regards, Chris
 

Offline NiHaoMike

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Re: Best RS232 terminal?
« Reply #13 on: February 24, 2020, 01:26:45 pm »
Cryptocurrency has taught me to love math and at the same time be baffled by it.

Cryptocurrency lesson 0: Altcoins and Bitcoin are not the same thing.
 

Offline retrolefty

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Re: Best RS232 terminal?
« Reply #14 on: February 24, 2020, 02:04:30 pm »
Hands down the most low level, flexible terminal emulation available. Scans ports, control of DTR/DTE control pis, etc. Originally called Brey termminal.

https://sites.google.com/site/terminalbpp/
 

Offline PKTKS

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Re: Best RS232 terminal?
« Reply #15 on: February 24, 2020, 02:18:52 pm »
Well..

Some folks relate "terminals" to ancient stuff  ...
(that specially fits folks which like systemd bizarre way of things...)

Terminals are indeed the core protocol pathways...

Needless to say that rollback way down 80s and early days
where terminals were pretty much defined in the core OS
like screen, keyb, lines, tapes.

Mincom predates all the above. It dates back mid 90s
but indeed early 90s terminals for core protocol handling

https://salsa.debian.org/minicom-team/minicom

It just evolved as a complete solution to whatever
protocol you may need by ncurses and any external applet.

Activelly maitanined.
No crappy UI  to mess your life
Can run standalone even from a REAL INIT system V
No useless stuff around
Still "THE" complete set of options
That includes from MODEM setup to KERMIT like

Can not think of a more robust and tested applet.

Putty is kinda  juvenile compared to Minicom

Paul


 

Offline cs.dk

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Re: Best RS232 terminal?
« Reply #16 on: February 24, 2020, 02:20:06 pm »
I like MobaXterm. It does it all, FTP, RS232, SSH, Telnet, you name it. And it does list active COM-ports.
 
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Offline ajb

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Re: Best RS232 terminal?
« Reply #17 on: February 24, 2020, 03:27:17 pm »
I've been sticking with Hterm (http://www.der-hammer.info/pages/terminal.html)  for the last several years.  I've tried pretty much all of the others mentioned in this thread and it has be best balance of features and stability IME.  It will occasionally crash if I send it too much data too quickly (like flat out at 3Mbd for ten seconds), but i just noticed I wasn't on the latest version, so maybe that's fixed now. 
 

Offline maginnovision

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Re: Best RS232 terminal?
« Reply #18 on: February 24, 2020, 05:04:25 pm »
I typically write my own programs. One advantage of this is you can scan ports and "auto" identify ports and equipment, assuming the equipment in question has a way to identify itself. When I don't use my own programs it's either putty or realterm.
 

Offline SiliconWizard

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Re: Best RS232 terminal?
« Reply #19 on: February 24, 2020, 05:34:25 pm »
 

Offline tmadness

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Re: Best RS232 terminal?
« Reply #20 on: February 24, 2020, 06:28:56 pm »
I personally use Coolterm. Its pretty nice in its UI and offers pretty much every basic feature. Its stable and free. Plus no installation needed its a runnable bin. 
 

Online ebastler

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Re: Best RS232 terminal?
« Reply #21 on: February 24, 2020, 07:59:46 pm »
I typically write my own programs.

Judging by the number of entries proposed in this thread, that's what everybody else seems to be doing.  ;)

I am truly surprised by the number of different terminal programs still in active use, and most of them still (more or less) actively maintained.
 

Offline RoGeorge

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Re: Best RS232 terminal?
« Reply #22 on: February 24, 2020, 08:15:59 pm »
1. Termite, by far the best to my needs.
2. Also, SerialPlot for live charts:  https://hackaday.io/project/5334-serialplot-realtime-plotting-software
 
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Offline peter-h

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Re: Best RS232 terminal?
« Reply #23 on: February 24, 2020, 09:41:48 pm »
Teraterm is great.

For USB to serial, kksystems.com do FTDI based isolated RS232-USB and RS4xx-USB converters which are not "chinese priced" but work very well. Teraterm connects to he virtual serial port created by the driver.
Z80 Z180 Z280 Z8 S8 8031 8051 H8/300 H8/500 80x86 90S1200 32F417
 
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Online tom66

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Re: Best RS232 terminal?
« Reply #24 on: February 24, 2020, 09:47:53 pm »
PuTTY is nice in many respects and is the one I use, primarily because it is so simple.  But it has several annoying quirks, such as not being able to handle the cable being disconnected well (you need to restart the entire application.) Nor can you change settings easily on the fly.

My wish would be for an app like PuTTY which has the simple design but with more consideration for serial ports/COM ports. TeraTerm is too far in the other direction unfortunately.
 


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