dataComet
Current Version: 4.6.6 / 10.0.6 (April 1, 2008)
dataComet is, without a doubt, the single most sophisticated terminal emulation client for the Mac. Quite a bit more mature than its predecessor Comet, above, it supports full emulation of PC-ANSI, VT-52, VT-100, VT-102, VT-220, IBM 3278 and IBM 3279 terminals, in glorious full color. It's extremely fast and feature-filled, supporting such unusual features as scrollback in 327x modes, X-Window-like window iconization, very sophisticated font handling (including leading control!), file transfers, very extensive preferences, superb printing controls, support for 5250 menus and function keys in 327x emulation modes, AppleScript support, and much, much more. Version 4.6.6 - the latest release for "Classic" Mac OS - adds/changes the following:
- Adds support for IND$FILE transfers with IBM mainframes, improved support for SCO-ANSI emulation, support for entering a telephone number for automatic modem dialing in the "New..."/"Reconfigure Session..." dialog, and several other features and bug fixes.
Version 10.0.6 - the latest release for Mac OS X - adds/changes the following:
- Fixed a VT100 bug which sometimes manifested itself in the OpenVMS EVE editor, occasionally causing "Command" to appear in a text area when the DO key was pressed and the SPLIT WINDOW command was in effect.
- Fixed VT100 stream printing so Tabs are expanded.
- Fixed cursor selection in emulator windows so selections are offset properly; 10.0.5 introduced a bug which shifted the start of the selection range.
dataComet is a $20 for the "Classic" version and $60 for the Mac OS X version.
User Reviews
"I am using dataComet and, from what I can see, it is a great telnet program. It seems to be more stable than NCSA 2.7b4."
—Mike Prindle
"Where do I buy the fan club t-shirt? It works; it has great features, and the users control the funding, rather than the University of Illinois. While I liked NCSA Telnet and Brown TN3270, and don't mean to imply that they did not work or were not also excellent, I like having one application do both."
—Andrew Starr
"I need to hook up to IBM mainframes; dataComet is the best tool for me. Features I like: 3279 and VT100 support, scroll-back buffers, macros, and fonts. tn3270 hasn't changed since 1996. dataComet is constantly improving."
—John Holland
[10.0.2] "This program had so many options, it was hard to figure out what was going on. It has really amazing font customizability. You can even use a different font for bold text in the terminal. Unfortunately, it doesn't have tabbed terminals. I have no idea why it opens up a second window when I start a new terminal. It ran quickly on my powerbook G4 867MHz, unlike iTerm."
—Edwin
[10.0.2] "I'm using this for 3270 emulation, on a Mac Pro running 10.4.7. The UI is a little clunky compared to tn3270x (took me a couple minutes to figure out how to open a remote session versus a local terminal), and in ISPF it incorrectly renders certain common 3270 graphical elements (e.g. box borders, or the border below the top ISPF menu). However, it does support destructive backspace by default, which it something I have been unable to get tn3270x to do for me. In general, it's keyboard mapping flexibility appears superior to that of tn3270x, and it also supports a wider variety of automatic codepage translations for input (1047 versus 37, for example, and many others)."
—Jared Hunter, September 22, 2006
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the Fat version (4.6.6).Also See . . .
Can't find what you're looking for? Try a search:
Also, if you have an older Mac, be sure to check out the "Classic" applications page for more options.
Finally, take a look at ALEMIA if you think you know that name of an application, but aren't quite sure.
Also Consider . . .
These are applications that are newer and of potential interest, but which I haven't yet selected for permanent inclusion. Have a look, and let me know if you think they deserve to be part of the permanent collection!