Not the usual retro gear of mine - vt100 hardware, not the emulation

Technology and Internet
#1

A few weeks back I picked up a real vt100 in a slightly grotty state, but cleaned up something terrific.

In my first year of uni I used one to log into one of the mainframes - probably in my first Pascal unit, but I could be mistaken there - even at the time they were on their last legs.

Dating from 1978, I give you the origin of the ‘vt100 emulation’ in so many terminals, a real live (and working!) vt100 terminal, connected to my current iMac via an (almost vintage itself!) Keyspan USB->Mac Serial connector, and a custom wired cable.

VT100 on IRC
VT100 logo

I swore I posted this back when I first got the thing working, but looks like I was distracted. Since I took the pics the PSU keeled over, but looks like one of the main power transistors is the issue there - and they’re still very available :slight_smile:

2 Likes
#2

These wouldn’t be too easy to find these days, would they? Admittedly starting to get somewhat envious over here. It looks to have cleaned up not half bad either, probably one of the better examples given their age.

Hopefully the PSU is a relatively simple fix, but knowing the simple construction and engineering of power supplies from around that era I somehow doubt it would be beyond repair, or that expensive to fix for that matter.

#3

Brings back memories of my fist year at Uni in 1987 and logging on to the Vax and PDP/11 using one of these (I think there also might have been some VT220’s as well)

#4

VT100 on a PFDP-11 using TECO those were the days