You may not know what a ADM-3, a TV910, or a H1420 are, but you probably have at least heard of a VT-100. They are all terminals from around the same time, but the DEC VT-100 is the terminal that practically everything today at least somewhat emulates. Even though a real VT-100 is rare, since it defined what have become ANSI escape sequences, most computers you’ve used in the last few decades speak some variation of the VT-100’s language. [Nikhil] wanted to see if you could use a VT-100 for real work today.
While the VT-100 wasn’t a general-purpose computer, it did have an 8080 inside. It only had about 3K of RAM, which was enough to act as a serial terminal. A USB serial port and a terminal with modern Linux, how hard could it be?
As it turns out there were a few issues. MacOS assumes terminals can take data at 9600 baud with no handshaking, apparently. It also means that any application that assumes redrawing the whole terminal is fast will be sorry for that choice.
Of course, there are commands modern VT-100-like terminals accept that the original didn’t. However, as you’ll see in the post, all of these things you can either live with or solve.
It is easy to make your own VT-100 replica. While the VT-100 may seem simple today, it was a marvel compared to even older terminals.
I miss my Amber VT110…. always wished it’d been green. My favorite color.
Just checked, the Terminal application bundled with MS Windows 1.x and 2.x does support VT-52 and ANSI.
The Terminal of Windows 3.x supports TTY (generic), DEC VT-100 (ANSI), DEC VT-52.
Some screenshots found here:
http://toastytech.com/guis/win1013.html
http://toastytech.com/guis/win203.html
I don’t regret a ton of things, but i do severely regret that i had a working VT 320 (i think) sitting in my home for most of the 90s and threw it out sometime after 2000.
I have a DEC VT52 which needs a little TLC – character board is bust, a DEC VT100 in working order and a little Wyse60. It’s been a while and my units are in storage however I love just logging into a more powerful Linux server over serial to do stuff rather than using a laptop. There’s something fulfilling about flicking the power switch and waiting for the screen to come up and give you a prompt.
Might revisit this soon 😀
I used real VT-100s at Hughes Aircraft in the late 90’s. My section of Hughes was very much in the if-it-ain’t-broke mold when it came to test equipment, and since the missile computer test bench controller was a PDP-11/70, it was period appropriate. I was not a fan of the keyboard, and the displays weren’t so much burned in as burned through.
Around about 2000, someone finally cut loose some money to replace them with VT-320s, and replace the PDP with a PDP-on-a-card emulator in a rack mount PC.
Seems like we used VT100 (or similar) in the college computer lab during the 80s to get to the campus VAX. Now-a-days, I like to start ‘cool-retro-term’ to get the feeling back of an old crt once in awhile.
I also created a dos like application that runs on RP2350 boards (like Fruit Jam) with the ansi escape codes support for serial connections. Text can be different colors, cursor can be moved as necessary, etc… Most all serial/telnet/ssh clients support the sequences like Putty.
Same experience, but the dorm VT100s were always in use. I often had to settle for using the dorm printer, which was a repurposed teletype.
I know what you mean about being in use…. Busy place… There were a few teletypes there also… Lucky for me, I was able to purchase a DEC Rainbow with 256K of RAM (half price to students, but still pricey) and dial in from home (yes, the college was in my home town) to access the VAX. Turbo Pascal was available by then, and was able to do a lot of the programming assignments off-line, and then up-load to the VAX and re-compile there. Sneaker net a floppy to another PC lab which had several Rainbows to do printing of reports and such. Those were the days!
I went back to the linked June 2021 Replica VT-100 discussion, but I believe Cool Retro Term does everything I want, and what other posters wanted, in a simulation/emulation; including ghosting phosphor effects, screen curvature, and it has presets like: “IBM VGA 8×16” and “IBM 3278 Reborn”, which isn’t DEC, but close enough to VT-100 for me.
I have a fond memories in the 90s of using VT-220s at multiple local libraries, I’m not even sure if they were running VMS or some Un*x on the servers, but I was fed up with the ridiculously clumsy websearch filters on the PCs there. It made looking up “Phillip K. Dick” a challenge, among many other innocent terms, and they enforced a time limit. So I turned to the VT-220s, (the towns were near DEC in Maynard, they all had DEC terminals) and brought up “The Internet Poetry Database” which was simply a link to the site brought up in the Lynx web browser (text-only). There was some key combo which would bring up the URL address bar. This reinforced my faith in the command line, and I investigated Linux soon after.
Except for the nostalgia for CRTs(not much gaming in this case beyond Tetris and Pong), I don’t know why anyone would want to take on such a project. Maybe IBM 3270 terminals for logging into mainframes, (although the x3270 suite of terminal emulation seems decent) and anything with a decent keyboard. Different strokes… I suppose