Getting online with a DEC VT-220 terminal
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ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.พ. 2025
- I have an untested DEC VT-220 terminal. Let's find out if this works and see if we can get online like it's 1985!
-- Video Links
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Deoxit D5:
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O-Ring Pick Set: (I use these to lift chips off boards)
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Elenco Electronics LP-560 Logic Probe:
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Hakko FR301 Desoldering Iron:
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Rigol DS1054Z Four Channel Oscilloscope:
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TL866II Plus Chip Tester and EPROM programmer: (The MiniPro)
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Magnetic Screw Holder:
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Universal ZIP sockets: (clones, used on my ZIF-64 test machine)
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RetroTink 2X Upconverter: (to hook up something like a C64 to HDMI)
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Plato (Clone) Side Cutters: (order five)
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Heat Sinks:
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Little squeezy bottles: (available elsewhere too)
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--- Instructional videos
My video on damage-free chip removal:
• How to remove chips wi...
--- Music
Intro music and other tracks by:
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Patron Rick pointed out that DEC stands for Digital Equipment Corporation not Digital Electronics Corporation. Thanks for the correction!
It was how I remembered it being spelled as I stumbled upon a DEC computer - it was labeled as such; Digital Equipment Corporation.
yep love these terminals. used to use them in a factory. funner if you have a mainframe to connect to, they would connect to the DEC mainframe and then you could do programming, etc. love these things. not much else you can do today with them lol
I remember vt220 as being based on 8085, not 8051… later revision I guess?
@@marygauffin7290 The VT220 Tecnical Manual, revision 1 from 1984 states that the CPU is a 8051. I don't see why they would have redesigned the terminal to use a different CPU in later models ("If it works, don't fix it").
Ok. I must remember wrong then. Thanks!
I was a firmware developer on the VT240/220 development team at DEC's Terminals Business Unit. The cable that connects the LK201 keyboard to the terminal is not a telephone cable. This keyboard was the first to incorporate the inverted T arrow key configuration. The VT100 and all subsequent DEC terminals accepted ANSI Escape sequences to control the advanced features of character mode operation such as selecting code page tables for foreign language localization, line drawing, split screen scrolling and other features. The VT220 was a cost reduction of the VT100 character-based terminal whereas the VT240 was a cost reduction of the VT125 graphics terminal. The graphics capabilities were controlled by a special drawing API called ReGIS, short for Remote Graphic Instruction Set.
Always love it when the devs chime in. Thanks for your insight and contributions to computing history. This was my favorite terminal to use. And its keyboard inspired that of the Commodore 128.
Amber terminals remind me of a quiet and warm community library, with the soft sound of clicking keys in the background.
100% this! That was my local main library back in the early to mid 90s! I spent a fair amount of time there reading all sorts of computer & hi-fi magazines I could not otherwise afford to subscribe to. Good times!
Yes! I immediately thought of the library!
standard knob company... well done on maintaining composure
Haha 😂
I wonder if there's also a non-standard knob company?
@@taffeylewis Alternate Knob Company
The second "T" in "ATDT" was for Tone dialing, otherwise you'd get pulse dialing :)
There is also ATDP to do pulse dialing explicitly. You could usually program the default you want into the modem.
Yep. I ran a BBS for 6 years, I remember that to this day.
DUCATIC DIAL for LIFE yo! r-r-r-r-r-rolling it o-o-o-old school
Confirmed.
Yep.
AT = ATtention (place in command mode)
D = Dial
P = Pulse
T = Tone
6:38 "Directive" as used here is the European word for "law" or "act" as used in the United States, and the 1982 means that is the year the directive was last updated. So this terminal is made to be compliant to that 1982 directive.
My Mom used to work for a company that let her purchase an old terminal when they upgraded to Sun workstations in the early 90’s. We hooked it up to a modem and she used it to connect to the municipal Library card catalog system. I would sometimes connect to BBS on it, so yes, it did happen that people would use terminals like this back in the day. I also had an Apple II so would mostly use that.
Ohhhhhh man! I've been on the hunt for a VT-220 for a while! As a fifth grader, I audited a Fortran 77 class in 1992, and the lab was full of these connecting to a VAX! Soooo many memories! I haven't found one in reasonable shape for a reasonable price though yet :(
We had a room full of these in college back in 1991, attached to an IBM RS6000, if I remember correctly. The IBM machine would frequently crash, and the background noise of typing would slowly die down as people realized they were getting no responses, followed by the inevitable heads popping up to see if everyone else was stuck. Happy days.
ATDT - Attention ( modem attention) D - Dial T - Touch Tone
that is etched in my memory forever from my Procomm+ days
Same back when I would call BBS and I ran one for about 6 years.
Yep, along with +++ATZ
I still have a VT-220 that I used at work back in the mid 80’s. I also have two Microvax II’s and two Micro PDP-11’s that came along with it. I saved them and a bunch of other DEC stuff from going in the dumpster when my company closed in the mid 90’s. So I really loved seeing this episode. I would love seeing more about DEC hardware.
My best 486 workstation I ever built was a 4 serial terminal AMD-486/133 with 64 MB running Linux. We remapped the interrupt from one of the 8 bit ISA cards, configured all the /dev/tty's and set the getty's to run on boot time and we had a 5 seat Linux work station. It rocked! We were bad ass in the 1990's. We had a mix of ATT terminals from a UB1, and a ... DEC VT220! The 4th monitor was a more generic green phosphor monitor.
There is no key labeled ESC on the VT220, but in VT100 mode the F11 key functions as one. The VT220 terminal was clearly designed for the VAX/VMS era, since on the earlier DEC-20/TOPS-20 the escape key was extensively used. The Wikipedia VT220 article has a separate paragraph titled the "Escape key controversy".
25:30 - Not just moving the cursor, and not just 80 or 132 columns. Note the large words "General Set-Up"; double size was also a feature. I had a college classmate who had limited vision who cried when she saw how small 80 column text was, completely unreadable to her. She cried again when I showed her doublesize mode, and added it to her VAX login command file so it was always there.
This takes me back, I was DEC VMS administrator that supported All-IN-1 which was an singular interface for mail, Wordperfect, and Lotus 123. Most of the VT terminals I dealt with used MMJ connectors for their serial connection that are like RJ-45 but the locking tail is offset to one side.
I spent so many hours programming PDP-11 and VAX computers in the '80s with VT100 and then VT220 terminals - it's great to see one alive and kicking. It seems amazing that I worked on what now seems like such a tiny screen but at the time it seemed great, of course the comparison was a chugging Teletype or a buzzing DECwriter!
these dumb terminals had enough electronics guts to put a lot of PCs to shame
I remember liking VT220's over the older consoles, as they had text highlighting and cursor control. Need to see emacs, Wordstar, and such to show off the terminal capabilities.
@@GnuReligion The VT series terminals were really sturdy an had nice displays, you could tell the vt220 was a cost cost version of the VT100 but it was still good. I used use EMACS on a VT220 which was really nice because it cold split the screen so you had a command line on half and the editor on the other. You could edit and debug in EMACS and run command to compile, etc on the command line. This was better than any IDE I've ever used.
@@ChristopherHailey Ah, sadly, I never found faith in the EMACS religion. It is impressive though, to watch someone use gdb, and edit multiple files through a text console. Am wondering if that vt220 will broadcast its termcap, when a modern linux box opens a getty on it.
@@GnuReligion EMACS is pretty interesting and it has the best backronym of "Escape-Meta-Alt-Control-Shift". I've been through EDT (love that one) and vi and even TECO (Eeek!) and others. I used to bring my EMACS startup file with me to my various consulting gigs, it got pretty long after while. Now the world is Linux an I just use vim and when I have to do something on Windows I use vim there too. A vt220 will work fine on a modern Linux, there is definitely a TERMCAP entry for it. The VT220 can even do VT52 mode
I did a contract gig at US West (the regional bell/telco) that replaced all kinds of dumb terminals across all of the US West regions, including Seattle, Portland, etc. Swapped 'em out with Win95 boxes at first, then gradually NT 3.51 and NT 4.0. Quite the project back in the '95 - '97 timeframe, tens of thousands of them. Perhaps that's where you got to encounter some of these... they sure were plentiful in the Portland offices, and we did a smaller batch in nearby Eugene as well.
Hello Adrian: As usual a great video. Hayes AT commands reference is a must have for any serial device. ATDT is AT = Attention D=dial T=touchtone. Ran a BBS back in the day. Got real familiar with modem commands and the AT subset. Thanks for the great video.
At my first job in 1993 we had VT-320s on our desk connected to Pyramid Ml and Nile servers. There was also one SparcStation SLC shared between 4 desks. Good times!
DEC VT-220, the exact terminal my high school used for the Library Index. Sat right next to the physical card catalog cabinets. I spent a lot of time screwing around with it... which included teaching the Librarians how to use it properly, and change the scroll modes etc. heh.
I spent a good chunk of my career on those things. VT05, VT52, Vt1xx, Vt2xx, Vt3xx. With sides of Beehive Medical Electronics, ADDS, Wise, and Deeco plasma display terminals.
Used these back in the early 90s in the Air Force. I was s medic, we used terminals for everything: mail, test results, booking appointments, etc. They were later replaced in the mid 90s by Windows 3.11 using terminal emulation.
Funny story: one year my father ordered business cards and they arrived with the "digital" DEC logo on them instead of his company's logo. We used those business cards for YEARS as tags for birthday and Christmas presents.
ATDT is dialling T is Tone, P is pulse but no one use pulse for a really long time. I use this quiet often back in the days since some device can be configure only throguh console port, or connect a Cisco router which most people use command line back then.
Great keyboard. If I recall, Dave Haynie mentioned the VT220 was among the inspirations for the Commodore 128’s keyboard.
I love these retro videos!! ATDT brings back memories of 1986 when I had to dial the phone to hook up by modem to the mainframe at UC Berkeley on my Apple Iic (and later Mac) with a terminal emulation program. I liked going to Evans Hall on campus to use the terminals hard wired to the mainframe, or it seemed like it since it was so much faster than 1200 bps over phone lines.
I used to work on a few different mainframes in the 1980s. Of all the terminals I used, I mostly liked the white ones, not so much the green ones, but the amber ones were the best - very easy on the eyes long term.
And I remember that VT-220 setup menu - pure nostalgia
The green ones always seemed to be the most 'smeary'.
@@oortcloud210 That's what I even found back in the day. I thought it might just be me.
Mainframes dont use VT's, but TN3270 protocol terminals.
@@Johan-ez5wo Yes, I know that - but mainframes have terminals. That's what I'm talking about - if they have no terminal how do you communicate with them?
Also, please re-read what I wrote as I did differentiate between them - I'm not sure whether you thought you were being cute.
@@Johan-ez5wo Also you do realise that I'm not talking about today, but back in the 1980s.
While I was attending, I worked for the University of Maryland and I found myself unpacking these terminals and setting them up in the summer of '85. Seeing this video, I can remember the smell of the packing material! It brings me back to a time that was very tranquil for me. How weird is that? That was 39 years ago, but I remember it all like it was yesterday.
(Don't ask me what happened yesterday. It wasn't important and no where near as fun as working on DEC equipment.)
Anyway, that was 39 years ago. But I still remember my Hayes command set. You need to brush up on that, Adrian. ;)
Used those VT220’s back in the mid to late 90’s. they were connected to a DECServer 100 which was a serial to Ethernet box to a Vax 4000. Also used many other DEC terminals like the VT520 and a Wyse (which I still have and connect to my VaxStation 4000/60). Used a VT220 to connect to packet radio, a form of amateur radio data communication. I have no idea if any of that is still in use today…
The ATDT are modem dial codes (at least that is where I encountered them the last time about 20 years ago :D ).
AT = Attention (be ready to receive a command)
DT = Dial Tone (dial a number using tone, as opposed to pulse)
There are many more but I just recognize this :)
When calling BBSs you'll probably want to put the terminal in VT102 as it's compatible with ANSI if my memory is any good. I used to bring a modem at work and hook it up to a spare DEC terminal to call my BBSs in the late 80's.
VT220 mode is also ANSI-compatible, it just adds some new features. IIRC the differences are in special key handling or something like that.
The VT-220 was available with white, green or amber phosphor. Different keyboards were also available and you seem to have the WPS (Word Processing System) version which has key legends specific to DECs word processing software.
I used a number of VT-100, -102, and -220 terminals when I was installing Northern Telecom DMS-100 telephone switches. One of the fun things I found about these terminals was the extensive escape code set. There are codes for character brightness, reverse video, flashing, double height, double width, direct cursor positioning, and much more that I can't remember right now.
Got some fond memories of working on Northern Telecom SL-1 and Meridian 1 large PBXs at the start of my career. Used VT100, 220,320 and 420s. Got a VT520 that takes the PS2 DEC keyboard and has SVGA out, just for old time sake.
I had a VT220 just like that, although I think my keyboard was a little different. My dad picked it up at a military surplus place around '95 or so, and I used it as a terminal for my Linux PC so my brother and I could both use it at the same time. I kept it for a long time, but did eventually get rid of it.
Now there's a blast from the past. I spent quite a lot of time in front of one of these while attending community college and taking computer courses. Brings back quite a few fond memories indeed. We had a a lab full of these, all hooked up to a VAX (started out as an old school big boy VAX -- I believe it was an 11/750 -- but later they upgraded to a MicroVAX.) Actually when I first started going to classes, they were using VT100's -- yes, the old school chonky VT100. And don't get me wrong, I do love the classic VT100 look. But they began replacing them with VT220's, and I grew to love the VT220 aesthetic as well. It looked very sleek and modern to my eyes. And yes, the BNC connector is indeed a video-out port. During classroom lectures, the teachers would send the output of their terminals to the room's projector using the BNC video output.
ATDT is the modem command for touch tone dialing while ATDP is for pulse dialing, for those who had rotary phones. If ATDP was used on a touch tone phone line it would still be recognized but ATDT on a pulse dialing phone line would do nothing.
The DEC VT-220 terminal is marvelous. I used one frequently in my early IT career (80's/90's) and used it one summer in college when I did data entry on a PDP-11... The terminal keyboard was so comfortable and the amber screen display with its (configurable) smooth scrolling was very easy on the eyes. She's a classic.
What's funny about those DEC terminals is that the monitors improved with newer models but the keyboards became worse (the keyboards shipped with the VT420 were terrible - so flimsy and light). As such, I used a VT220 keyboard with a VT420 monitor!
Way back in my CS college days I spent so much time in computer labs with dozens of these around. First steps with FTP, email, emacs, vi and gopher on these things as there were only a few Sparcstations (that were almost always occupied). We were encouraged to do most of our work on the vt220s instead of waiting for the workstations. A nice coincidence is that almost all of them were amber, with a few green ones here and there. Oh, and the printers in the lab were DECwriters.
Same here! (Brown University?) I became an emacs master working on code from my dorm room with a dumb terminal and a modem....
One of the classic terminals. Used one for many years as a sysadmin - I think I was one of the last with a terminal on my desk (before it headed home). The VT220Z was even better as it had 4 pages of memory so you could scroll back through the text that had disappeared off the screen.
Digital Equipment Corporation, not Digital Electronics Corporation - That looks like it was from a Word Processing System (WPS) - pronounced "WOOPS". These were PDP 11/23 or MicroVax machines that would sit under the desk. The PF1 key was called the "gold key" which put the keypad in the second state. What distinguishes the keyboard is the labels on the keys, with the "red" and "green" keys inserting fonts, styles, and formatting. You had WPS as part of the AllIn1 suite on the VAX, so the key assignments matched the stand alone machine.
The WPS terminal was a VT220, but wouldn't have the VT220 badge on the front.
I still have the muscle memory for the EDT keypad and can move and edit a file faster than I can in vim.
Cool thing I learned when I was going to SUNY at Buffalo back in the mid 80's was definineing the keypad to execute funtions in DCL. So, when at the command line, I had a key defined to "show default" and other functions. Cool stuff.
Yes, same here. I too have muscle memory of the EDT and LSE keypads. Gotta love "learn keys" in LSE. Another thing I used to do was put my username in the answerback, so that I could log in quicker.
The Pizza Hut franchisee I worked for in the early 2000s still used terminals with amber monitors. They were bought out by another franchisee around 2006 or 2007 I think, and those terminals were finally replaced with touchscreen POS computers at that time.
This DEC VT-220 would work perfectly with your UNIX P/20 system... So cool... Nicely done... =8-)
Data Leads only probably means it is only going to use pins 2,3,7 on the interface TxD, RxD and ground. The other selection will use a few of the other connections, RTS/CTS for flow control, DSR, DCD, DTR and maybe RI an Busy if you are going to use it on a dial up.
Started my career working on one of these, identical to that coding in VAX Basic and C on VAX's, and Micro VAX's. DECs machines and the VAX/VMS OS were amazing back then - so well designed.
This is really all I'd need to scratch my retrocomputing itch. A simple terminal with a nice amber display and keyboard, and connection to the internet to read text sites and play interactive fiction games. :)
Didn't we often see these at old libraries...these were the search computer and the librarian computer for checking out your books.
Terminals were pretty standard equipment at libraries.
They were also pretty common in offices. Everything ran on a central computer and a cheap terminal was all that was needed at each point.
I remember a few of these types of terminals in the library at the university I attended in the early 00's. Used for looking up books and other reference material in the catalog of course. They had some pretty gnarly screen burn-in but they worked perfectly fine. I'm sure they are long retired at this point.
I remember as a kid the city I was in built a new library in the mid 90's. The entire card catalog was accessed via DEC terminals regularly placed around the building. I think they may have been VT320 but don't remember for certain.
In the Swiss library I work in, and have worked for decades, we used to have Tandberg TDV 2200 terminals for a Norsk Data-based system. I still have one, but it's currently broken and could be hard to repair (went with a puff of smoke when I last switched it on about 15 years ago, and I never opened it since, so no idea how bad it might look inside...)
I also have a VT-220 and love it for browsing the text based internet. Mine is connected to a Raspberry Pi for terminal access. My favorite use of it is playing text MUD RPGs, there are still a lot of them active out there! This is one of the terminals I would play MUDs on at our local college's computer lab when I was a kid, so it's very nostalgic.
My only complaint is the special keyboard it requires. The LK201 feels absolutely horrible to type on, and I've tried multiple USB to VT keyboard converters and they don't work flawlessly (e.g. typing too quickly can duplicate characters and other oddities).
Yeah a total mush-fest that LK201!! I do have a couple other DEC keyboards around including some more modern ones..... but I kind of recall those are bad too.
@user-dw8qz1qg3x Yes there are tons of them! Just Google for "mud connector" and you'll find a site that lists all the active ones. If you sort by population you can find active ones if you want other people online to help you.
@adriansdigitalbasement2 the Hayes command ATDT is AT=attention DT=Dial Tone to dial dtmf codes. ATDP is dial Pulse used when dialing old rotary pulse dialing land lines which does not exist any more
wow BBS still exist this took me back in time so awesome Adrian thanks for sharing.
This is a really cool terminal. We had the same or similar ones in our local library. Not sure when they started using them, but I used them in the mid-late 90's and maybe early 00's. They used it for their card catalog as well as looking up which other local libraries had certain books. I think you could even reserve books through the system! So yea, I have a strange bit of nostalgia for these machines. I know they had amber terminals, but I think some of them might have been green as well.
Currentloop allows for RS232 communication over very long distances (using cheap 2 or 4 wire telephone cables) in the 1980/1990.
Very handy if you have a huge companybuilding where everyone needs a VT100/VT220 terminal to work on the computersystems (like mainframes) standing in the basement (like my company had). We used ADM12 Terminals.
6:00 the mistake of leaving the switch in 220V position will not harm the monitor in USA; as opposed to that, in Europe sometimes people forget to switch that selector and the thing blows away with a nice smoke bomb, the caps exploding and leaking the acid, as well as some thermistors and resistances too.Surprsisingly the fuse survives many times.
A common joke with our lab equipment was that the manufacturer used all these expensive transformers to protect the fuses from blowing.
It worked. We never had to replace a fuse.
The keyboard you have is the "wordprocessor" VT3x0 version. You can tell with the "gold" key on the keypad (wordprocessor).
The VT2x0 keyboard has a clear cover for a printed key definition strip to fit under instead of the triangular gully.
A place I worked for resold these for their mainframe applications. They prevented customers from using regular (cheaper) VT terminals by replacing the ROMs so the function keys sent new escape sequences that the applications would recognize. You could pound the function keys all day with a regular VT terminal and nothing would happen.
Really enjoyed this Adrian, thank you
I worked at a place that used Wyse terminals emulating VT100 for ticketing. We had Practical Automation thermal ticket printers and a barcode reader pen hooked up. IIRC they were connected to SCO OpenServer 5.
They were pretty reliable, we had them around from ‘92 to around 2007 when we switched to Windows based terminals. They were seriously burned in when we got rid of them.
Ahhh, this takes me back. In college, I used lots of random terminals to get on the various central campus mainframes. VT220 was one of the ones I most coveted, since (a) they had that relaxing amber color, and most importantly, (b) they could do a blazing 19200bps (which was pretty much the highest you could get without being directly on a console). If I was unlucky, I'd be stuck on something that maxed out at 2400.
I bet that BBS got some new users after this was posted! I miss the old BBS days!!
One of the 'problems' with the older VTs is the absolute punishment dealt from real world use in auto parts stores, public access locations such as libraries, and offices so most are severely yellowed, screen burnt, and have keyboards that are missing keys, etc. In demand from people "our" age, they fetch several hundred dollars and often either do not have keyboards, or have them in poor shape. Resellers of bulk gear sell them for high $$ in unknown shape. Solution? Buy as VT510, 520 or 525. Digital Equipment was wise enough to integrate standard PS/2 keyboards; problem solved and they have many more options and emulations, are energy star, white text (the VT525 is color), etc. I picked one up for my PiPD 8i and never looked back. Thanks Adrian... DEC invested quite a bit in making sure their gear was well built, serviceable; evident from your tour of the innards.
The smooth scroll feature looked really impressive, but completely impractical to use. A very satisfying on/off switch like many things in the 80s/90s!
It depended on what you were using it for really. 19200 is pretty slow, so scrolling full 80 col rows of text 1 pixel per frame would just about keep up, but if it's lots of short lines then it wouldn't (I think it switches to scrolling by characters if it's not keeping up anyway).
Circa 1984 when we got them at Kodak. You have the word processor keyboard, most of the function keys were programmable.
The orange key is the "Gold" key. Awesome terminal! A complete working VT220 is out of my price range.
Thanks Adrian! I enjoyed the video! Just a bit of trivia... I'm pretty sure the flyback on those screens are the same ones that were used in Sony Trinitron TV's from the 70's forward. They also have the same issue with that strap failing out of nowhere and causing ICs to die.
You said to mention if we had experience with using these terminals, and I actually do! Back in 1995 I was a volunteering at the Eugene Free Net, which was a non-profit ISP down in Eugene, OR that provided free terminal (text-based) and cheap PPP (graphical) dial-up internet access. In the lobby of the EFN offices, there were some terminals that anyone could drop in and use to connect to the main user server at a shell prompt, and thus get at their email with Pine, or do other text-based Interneting of the day. If memory serves, these were dumb terminals, either DEC VTxxx or Wyze something-or-others. They were all connected to a device called a Portmaster, that had a bunch of DB25 connectors and an AUI transceiver port, that was in turn connected to the local LAN and eventually (via a single 28.8kbps modem) to the servers downtown. The Portmaster had a 3.5" floppy drive inside itself (not accessible without unscrewing and removing the cover) that it used for persistent storage! How wild is that? What a time to be alive...
Nice. Took me back to University, they were used by the library search system in particular. Loved Amber and smooth scrolling.
ATDT stands for AT (attention) DT (dial tone), there was also ATDP to dial pulse which I bet your little box supports :)
Yeah that's right -- but on this ZiModem firmware, it seems to stand for Telnet and PETSCII. Not exactly intuitive as leaving either out just .... who knows what it was doing. :-)
@user-dw8qz1qg3x That was the end because a POTS line (DS-0) supports 64k, and the phone company reserves 1 bit as a control bit that is reserved for the phone company, thus, 'dial up' maxed out at 56k
@user-dw8qz1qg3x Strictly speaking many of us still use modems, but in general they are embedded in mobile phones, adsl routers and the like. Occasionally (like my V.fast modem by BT) you still get a pure modem box.
Nice! I do love an amber screen on a monochrome terminal / console. Also nice to see a DEC terminal grace your videos.
Licking my lips in anticipation that you might be working on a PDP-8 or PDP-11 if not a VAX over the next episode or 3 - :D
Interesting .. Most of the terminals I used back in the day were VT220 "compatible" - tho we did have a couple VT240s - the 240s had actual graphics capability. The one terminal clone that sticks out as my favorite was a C.Itoh 224 - which was a well made VT220 clone with a larger screen. What a way to bring back memories... (and, btw - ATDT is AT "Dial" "Tone" vs ATDP which would be pulse dialing - on a Hayes compatible modem.
i tried to repair one of these terminals in 1992. DEC wanted $800 for the service manual. the company i worked for at the time thought that was way too much for a one-off repair. we did a lot of repairs on Wyse and Amdek terminals, but the DEC was a different beast.
Really cool stuff!
DEC used RJ connectors but note the tab will be to one side so they aren’t quite compatible with regular phone or Ethernet cables.
I'm also planning to be back at VCF Midwest, I look forward to seeing you there!
I've been using them a lot And what VT-220's make them special is there extended keyboard with many function key's and special characters. When designing Oracle applications you could make some nice screens. use the vt-220 as a console on any unix/linux machine makes much more sense than dail a BBS. try some text editors on the consiole port and it should work nicely.
As a computer salesman in the mid 1990s we used amber CRT terminals connected to a print/sales server to record sales and print reciepts. The monitors suffered severe burn-in even then.
I think our local library used VT220, or at least some other terminals, for book search, very early nineties. Different keyboards though, and a bit more streamlined. And I suddenly remember where I started loving light, clicky keys
I worked at a repair dec center as a manger, and repaired also laptops, printers, desktops and took in others as compac , and gateway etc.
Back in the day I hooked up to the Albuquerque ROS in some similar fashion but with a good modem for the time and was surprised to have the sysadmin there engage me in a backend forth via some obscure mode that I didn't know existed. We were ending our remarks with "o"s and exited with "oo". Sort of shortwave like. 1990?
Ah, the "gold key". Used in VMS's edit program as a sort of an "alternate escape" key.
Fun fact: SABIC, which bought GE Plastics back in 2007, still lists NORYL resin in their website… so yeah, GE probably did make the resin that Stanard Knob Company used to make the monitor enclosure!
While I can't find a reliable reference on the Internet, I highly suspect that "DBP Directive" means some regulation about EMC by the "Deutsche Bundespost" (German Federal Post Office). At that time, the post office was also the national state-owned telecommunications provider, and also had a role comparable to the FCC. This sticker thus means that this device complies with German EMC regulations, specifying the number of the standards document, which has been published in 1982.
Wow, what a great find.
I did have to install something like this in 1988. Not using a DEC, but a PC setup. 386-16, with 4M RAM, 40MB Hard Drive. A multi serial card, and operating system called PC-MOS (does anyone remember that one??), and Three Terminals.
That was so cutting edge at the time, and impressed the hell out of the customer. Don't ask about the speed. But the main machine could switch to each user terminal and see what they were doing, and fix any problems, and the O/S was basically a multitasker running individual MSDOS machines in memory. Cost about AU$15,000 (from memory) at the time.
And you're cheating using that wifi modem. Get and acoustic coupler and watch the text slowly scroll down the screen. Or turn the speed down to 300bps.
Oh gosh I remember looking after these things in the university library. We've come a long way since then.
Thank you, Adrian, for bringing back memories from when I started working in the 90"s, developing defense software on Vax with one of those !
The DEC (later Boundless) VT520 series can be found today for cheap and use VGA monitors and PS/2 keyboards for those who want to find a real DEC terminal, but don't want to gamble on a dying CRT or missing MMJ-connector keyboard.
Yeah, those rock. Especially when paired with a DEC LK-401 PS2 terminal keyboard, as those have the same layout as the old VTs.
Yes, that do. Slight correction on my part. The VT520 is the standard terminal and the VT525 is the one with the terminal base that you can plug a VGA monitor and PS/2 keyboard in. I have one and I love it.
I did use a serial terminal and modem to BBS and to connect to the Internet back in the day. If nothing else, many dial-in systems left their built-in 'gopher' and 'telnet' programs enabled.
I used to install the network cabling for these in the 80s, I’m still installing network cables to this day.
As a recreational pedant, an ISO enter is not a “big-ass enter” - the latter covers the combined footprint of _both_ ISO and ANSI enters 😊 (and usually requires a smaller backspace or shift to make up for the lost room!)
I don't think the amber (or white) phosphor was as efficient. As a result, the tube had to pump more electrons into them to get any kind of reasonable brightness. That affected the life of both the electron gun and the phosphor. Personally, I liked green the most. The amber and white ones I worked with seem to have a long persistence that made fast changes (like scrolling) and issue. Plus, I find green more calming.
Btw the German text says "This device may not be used with an anode voltage greater than 14kV. It is, according to [fancy rule/law number of x-ray law] interference voltage safe."
In 1993 we used Dec terminals, they were being replaced back then too. Rockwell used them back in the day. My early twenties.
A long time ago I used my C64 with VT-100 emulation software to dial into my work, a 7171 communications controller, that translated my VT-100 to an IBM 3270 terminal. From there I could log into CMS. My modem was 300 baud, the 3270 had 1920 characters, 300 baud was about 30 characters per second. Every time I hit enter it would repaint the whole screen, this took about 60 seconds. Fun times!
Rifa smoke suuuucks! I left a Mac IIci plugged in overnight, and at least one Rifa blew in it. It stunk up my entire house. Like you said, the computer was off, but still plugged into a live outlet. Lesson learned.
It's funny that the wifi modem thingy you have uses ATDT and ATDP to dial. I remember that, back in the Hayes-compatible modem days, ATDT would enable tone dialing while ATDP was pulse. I wonder what they stand for now, since it's not really dialing anything.
Wordperfect on a VAX? Something new to learn every day (and showing I’m definitely PC age, although uni did have a VAX - but no WP!)
I was a unix admin in the late 90s and used to buy these on a very very early eBay for like $5 and stick them in server rooms attached to serial ports to control servers.
I worked in a university computer lab in the mid 90s and we still had a load of those kicking around; the Vax they were originally connected to had been retired and replaced with an IBM RS/6000, but the terminals lived on for a good few years. (Also, turn on smooth scrolling!)
No. Leave smooth scrolling off. Unless you're only ever going to receive short bursts of data, having smooth scrolling turned on will cause the terminal to either display far more slowly than it's capable of doing, or (if handshaking fails) to miss data as the buffer fills up much faster than the screen can scroll. I know this from experience (at 9600bps). I guess it would work just fine at low speeds such as 300bps or maybe even 600bps, but it doesn't work correctly at higher baud rates.
We used these with a PDP-11/70 at the Kirsten Wind Tunnel up to about 1995. The hard disks were like top-loading washing machines and held a whopping 200MB of data.
This looks similar to the terminals we used in the 90s in the USAF to access our Core Automated Maintenance System (CAMS) used by aircraft maintenance techs.
That keyboard brings back memories. My first computer was an old vaxmate 286 with built-in monochrome CGA monitor.
This makes me want to pull my VT-220s out of storage. I have a green CRT and an amber CRT version but haven't used them in forever.