One of the features of our flagship Windows Terminal emulator TTWin 4 is the wide range of terminal coverage that it offers. With more than 80 different terminals from a variety of manufacturers supported, we believe it's the most comprehensive package available.
In our many years of producing terminal emulation software we've discovered the some terminals are, of course, more widely used than others and that certain terminals have become strongly associated with particular industries.
One of the reasons for a terminals popularity in a certain industry is the success of one or more specialized software packages which have been designed to meet the needs of that industry. These applications are also typically designed to take advantage of the unique feature set and specifications of a certain terminal, so, as a software package become popular, the prevalence of the corresponding terminal in that industry grew.
Televideo Terminals – Automotive
Televideo terminals are particularly popular in the automotive industry thanks to a couple of software packages designed to let dealers and repair shops order parts and track inventory. Thanks to the sheer scale of the American automotive industry TVI955 terminal emulators are widely used.
Unisys – Airlines
Unisys produced large scale host systems which found a home in multiple industries. An extremely successful sector for Unisys is the airline industry, where Unisys mainframes and their terminals could be found powering a range of related services including airline reservation systems.
McDonnell Douglas – Health Care
For a company that is most famous for it's aerospace business it's surprising that McDonnell Douglas produced mid range computer system that proved very popular with the health care industry. Once again this popularity is down to the success of specialized software packages for McDonnell Douglas systems.
Prime – Defense
Prime mid range systems are rarely found in use today as the company itself has gone out of business and rather than maintain the equipment and expertise required for their upkeep many former users have migrated to newer systems. However when we have come across a Prime user we often find that defence industries were/are big users.
Stratus and Tandem - Finance and Banking
Stratus and Tandem systems owe their popularity to their specialist design, rather than the success of any particular piece of software. Stratus and Tandem (now Hewlett Packard NonStop) systems are designed with fault tolerance and redundancy at both a hardware and software level. As a result their systems and terminals are often used in critical system such as those run by financial and banking institutions.
General Purpose Terminals
Hewlett Packard, IBM and DEC
By far the most popular terminals are those which are used to connect to host systems that are typically used as business workhorse – that is, mainframes and mid range systems which perform a variety of general purpose tasks. IBM's DEC's and HP systems feature prominently here. Above all these companies manufactured true mainframes, large systems capable of supporting hundreds of users and for that reason they and their terminals are widely found in government and big business.
A special mention must go to the venerable IBM 3270 terminal which is still used extensively, particularly in the finance and banking sector.
Wyse Terminals
Wyse was a manufacturer of another series of terminals that found favor among Unix developers because it was inexpensive and had the ability to adopt 'multiple personalities' which allowed to it work with software designed to take advantage of a features of other terminals such as a DEC VT220.
TTWin 4 is Turbosoft's premier terminal emulation software for Windows operating systems.
With support for 80+ terminal types, secure SSL3, SSH and SFTP along with macro and scripting support, TTWin4 is a comprehensive terminal emulation solution for superior host connectivity.
For product information, free trial software and technical specifications, visit the TTWin 4 product page.
