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Here is a real blast from the past that recalls getting email via Pine, finding media in UseNet, posting to a BBS and doing search in Gopher. Unless you’re an internet old fart, you’re unlikely to be familiar with these services or the serial port connected analog modems that made them all happen.

David P. Alverson is the keeper of the flame that is terminal emulation on the fairer platform. Thereupon, he has released ZTerm 1.2 (download, shareware, $20), which comes to market with one major new feature — the app is now a Universal Binary.

Terminal.app and ZTerm both have terminal emulation capability, but Terminal.app talks only to other programs, whereas ZTerm talks only to serial ports, and other drivers that identify themselves as serial ports.

In a nutshell, that means Terminal is good for talking to services and ZTerm better suited to interfacing with serial-port attached devices.

For those with an old 68K or early PowerPC Mac, ZTerm 1.0.1 from 1995 is still available.

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