I need a dumb terminal emulator for iMac OSX. Something that emulates a Lear Siegler ADM-3A, a DEC VT100, or a DEC VT220. Is there such a thing? Where can I find it? I would use this to run an old Cromemco S-100 Z80 computer.
iMac Line (2012 and Later)
Terminal.app emulates a DEC VT100 reasonably well. Use ** (built in), or maybe GNU screen (older, built in) or tmux (add-on) from there to connect out the serial line to your target device using a USB dongle/adapter, if that’s what this is about. Drivers for various USB to serial, adapters using the PL2303 are either available or built-in. There are add-on emulators that can perform the serial connect for you, but I’ve been using Terminal.app and ** and a Plugable USB-to-serial adapter, and have used Keyspan adapters.
Terminal.app emulates a DEC VT100 reasonably well. Use ** (built in), or maybe GNU screen (older, built in) or tmux (add-on) from there to connect out the serial line to your target device using a USB dongle/adapter, if that’s what this is about. Drivers for various USB to serial, adapters using the PL2303 are either available or built-in. There are add-on emulators that can perform the serial connect for you, but I’ve been using Terminal.app and ** and a Plugable USB-to-serial adapter, and have used Keyspan adapters.
What is wrong with Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal? It will support VT100 and VT220 escape sequences.
There is also iTerm2
Neither of them are that dumb, but they both support the Digital Equipment Corporation VTnnn terminal escape sequences.
If you need to connect to a serial device, then from within a Terminal session use 'screen' (man screen)
screen -r [[pid.]tty[.host]]
FYI: tmux is not on the Mac by default, where as GNU screen and ** are shipped with macOS.
Tangent:
MrHoffman, how do you specify a serial tty to tmux? At work, I ssh to a Linux system and run tmux to keep those sessions alive, and years and years ago, I used GNU screen to talk to serial ports (I think it was debugging an Alpha system kernel when I was in ZKO3; could be misremembering), but I've never used tmux to attach to a serial port (no current need).
Dumb Terminal Emulator?
