Terminal Emulators for Windows

[gnuarm]

It seems that every time I look for terminal emulators, the field narrows and many of the apparent options are not actually terminal emulators.  Some years ago when I was developing a test fixture using a serial interface for control, I used Putty.  But I'm finding it to be a bit limiting for what I want to do now. 

Putty won't let me use different colors for received text and sent text.  It won't display control characters.  It also won't let me dump a text file into the serial port.  Unless maybe I'm just not finding these features... 

Can anyone recommend a terminal emulator that would do the job a bit better?  I remember when Windows came with a serial port tool like this, that was not great, but got the job done.  I can't find any sign of it now.

I thought maybe I'm using the wrong terminology, so I tried searching on "serial port monitor" and get programs that hook the serial port driver to show the data going back and forth. 

Is there a better term for what I'm looking for?

[nightfire]

Maybe https://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/features.html offers something in this regard with customizable output for some keywords/conditions?

[NiHaoMike]

Try Realterm.

[DavidAlfa]

YAT, Realterm, Teraterm,  232analyzer...

[gnuarm]

Thanks.  I downloaded it and it seems to have a lot of capability.  Mostly these programs are not really oriented to serial port stuff, but I'll see what it can do.  So far I've not found a way to flag transmit and receive differently.

[DavidAlfa]

YAT does print different colours for Rx and Rx.

[westfw]

not actually terminal emulators.
   :
Putty won't let me use different colors for received text and sent text.  It won't display control characters.  It also won't let me dump a text file into the serial port.

While the features you're asking for are useful, they also fall out of the ranges of things that I'd call "terminal emulation" (and more into "serial analyzer" territory.)

[gnuarm]

Try Realterm.

Realterm seems to do most of it.  Maybe even the different colors for transmit and receive.

[BrianHG]

This one is tiny and a portable, non registry version:  https://www.9bis.net/kitty/

I know you can set colors, but not sure if it will go to the extent of different RX and TX colors.
Though, the source code is available...

[timeandfrequency]

Hi gnuarm,

You may perhaps have a look to 'Serial Port Monitor!' which features several of your needs like T/R distinct colours, selective filtering of incoming and outgoing streams and injection of external/recorded data. A basic user manual can be found here.

Also check out 'Virtual Serial Port (VSPD)' that is forged by the same editor and which nicely enhances the above mentionned software in order to setup advanced virtual and physical serial ports 'eavesdropping' techniques.

However, both tools are rather expensive ('Pro' versions are 200 bucks each) but you can try them for a fortnight.

[tooki]

I’ve been using CoolTerm lately and have been happy with it.

[merox]

You might want to take a look at HTerm: https://www.der-hammer.info/pages/terminal.html

[DonKu]

Hyperterminal used to be bundled with Windows. It still seems to function reasonably well as an Inet search word.

[SiliconWizard]

I've used Putty a lot, but I second YAT for the OP's requirements. Very configurable, free and open source.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/y-a-terminal/files/

[Veteran68]

As others have said, you're not looking for a terminal emulator, per se. You're looking for serial analyzer software. Some of the free options mentioned, such as YAT and HTerm, will probably meet your needs. Proper analyzer software goes way beyond terminal emulators and will clearly show Rx and Tx traffic, control characters and flow control behavior, and per-character high resolution timestamps.

Early in my software/firmware engineering career I did tons of industrial serial development, troubleshooting, and reverse engineering. I made my own serial "sniffer" cable assemblies to tap serial connections and, depending on where I was working and what I was working on, used both commercial and custom software that I wrote to do what I needed. There wasn't much in the way of "open source" nor the internet at that time, so options were limited to expensive commercial options (or scopes/HW decoders) or write your own serial software.

[merox]

As others have said, you're not looking for a terminal emulator, per se. You're looking for serial analyzer software.

Indeed, that's why I suggested HTerm. Another option might be Docklight.

For a terminal emulator i would have suggested ZOC: https://www.emtec.com/zoc/

[SiliconWizard]

Well, for very specific needs, if existing software doesn't meet your requirements, writing your own tool is certainly an option to consider.

In particular, if you want to display data in a particular way, handle file I/O, but don't care about fully emulating a standard terminal per se (like VT100), this could be achieved relatively quickly.

[gnuarm]

Hi gnuarm,

You may perhaps have a look to 'Serial Port Monitor!' which features several of your needs like T/R distinct colours, selective filtering of incoming and outgoing streams and injection of external/recorded data. A basic user manual can be found here.

Also check out 'Virtual Serial Port (VSPD)' that is forged by the same editor and which nicely enhances the above mentionned software in order to setup advanced virtual and physical serial ports 'eavesdropping' techniques.

However, both tools are rather expensive ('Pro' versions are 200 bucks each) but you can try them for a fortnight.

Yeah, sometimes I let the price get in the way, $200 really is not much. 

The VSP is not what i need.  I've actually got a free VSP program on here somewhere.  That lets you test software without an actual hardware port.  Not what is needed per se. 

The Serial Port Monitor sounds like it would do the job.  They talk about a terminal mode and "built-in terminal", so likely what I need, if they let me dump a file to the target.  It's a bit hard to tell from their description.  They have an image with what I think is the terminal mode, but they've added time stamps to every message.  I would need to show only data, no timestamps.

Thanks for the links. 

[gnuarm]

I’ve been using CoolTerm lately and have been happy with it.

Does it do any of the things I'm looking for?

[gnuarm]

As others have said, you're not looking for a terminal emulator, per se. You're looking for serial analyzer software.

Not sure I understand that.  I need a terminal interface to a COM port.  I just want it to show the transmitted and received data in different colors, or brightness or backgrounds.  Otherwise, it is a simple terminal application. 

One problem I have is that the term "terminal" seems to also be used for command line interfaces.  I had a different setup, where I was using something like SSH to log into an rPi which was connected via a serial port to an embedded target.  Trying to find a terminal emulator for Linux is nearly impossible, because they consider the command line to be a terminal emulator!  lol 

I don't recall the setup I ended up with, but I had to run something on the PC to log into the rPi, (maybe Putty), then a different program on the rPi to connect to the target via the comm port.  The trick in that case was handling all the details of control characters, as to which were intercepted by whom.  But once I found the right tool, it worked well, other than not being able to reset the target since the com port was USB.  There are a few USB hubs that let you control power to the USB ports, but very few.

In this case, I have a dumb device (that I'm designing) to receive commands, and provide replies.  I'm really trying to test the comms interface, which will have speed issues unless I can optimize the interface.  So the need for a way to directly interact with the com ports. 

Heck, maybe I'm better off developing my own.  The existing app sends all comms to a telnet app, along with ANSI controls to set the bold feature for one direction and not for the other.  Since every command ends with a CR/LF pair, it naturally displays on alternate lines.

Some of the free options mentioned, such as YAT and HTerm, will probably meet your needs. Proper analyzer software goes way beyond terminal emulators and will clearly show Rx and Tx traffic, control characters and flow control behavior, and per-character high resolution timestamps.

I don't recall all the details, but I've yet to find one that does everything I need. 

Early in my software/firmware engineering career I did tons of industrial serial development, troubleshooting, and reverse engineering. I made my own serial "sniffer" cable assemblies to tap serial connections and, depending on where I was working and what I was working on, used both commercial and custom software that I wrote to do what I needed. There wasn't much in the way of "open source" nor the internet at that time, so options were limited to expensive commercial options (or scopes/HW decoders) or write your own serial software.

This is over Ethernet or USB, so no sniffer cables involved.  It's going to be purely software or nothing at all.  I'm trying to keep the software simple, to ease debugging issues, but the adapter vendors don't cooperate by selling stuff which can keep the actual serial port humming at over 1 Mbps.  They all have delays that kick in when the application needs to wait for a reply.  I'm going to have to modify the protocol to send a burst of commands, and force the slaves to wait for the bus to be clear to send their replies.  I think I have a scheme to do that. 

One suggestion was to send extra characters between the commands to allow the slaves to reply.  This would be very messy to look at on an analyzer.  YUK!

[gnuarm]

As others have said, you're not looking for a terminal emulator, per se. You're looking for serial analyzer software.

Indeed, that's why I suggested HTerm. Another option might be Docklight.

For a terminal emulator i would have suggested ZOC: https://www.emtec.com/zoc/

This is where the communications failure occurs.  A terminal emulator to me, is just that, an emulation of a terminal, such as a VT100 or a Lear Sigler.  If it displays the control characters, allows sending a file without a protocol, and highlights send and receive differently, that's my boy!  Zoc does not fit that bill at all.  It's an SSH application. 

I've looked at Hterm a bit now and it seems to have all the features I need.  It lets me adjust the font size in the data display, but not the font or other features, like bold.  They distinguish Tx from Rx by colors of underline.  It also seems to block data, before display.  I have a wire loopback on the RS-232 connector and if I send a file with three commands, terminated with CR/LF, it displays all of that, before displaying any of the received data.  In the real application, I might want to control that. 

Yeah, my vision is not as good as it used to be and I really would like to be able to change that font a bit.  So far, this is the only program that meets my requirements.

[gnuarm]

You might want to take a look at HTerm: https://www.der-hammer.info/pages/terminal.html

That seems to tick all the boxes.  I would love if it could let me change the font a bit, but it seems to work ok with a loopback on the serial port.