15 Apr
2014
15 Apr
'14
10:02 a.m.
I?m not sure about Bill?s comment that "it is one
of the most sought after terminals that a serious collector could actually acquire.? If I
were looking for a PLATO terminal, the last place I would look is the CDC ISTs. Those
were always weird mongrels. ?Real PLATO terminals have plasma panels.? :-)
These earlier PLATO terminals, however, are extremely unobtainable.
The IST-IIs, on the other hand, are still out in the wild in small
quantities. Serious collectors of terminals could expect, after some
amount of legwork, to get an IST-II for their collection, but could
not reasonable expect to get one of the plasma types.
From my not-a-dedicated-terminal-collector perspective,
what other
reasonably obtainable terminals are as high on the list as the CDC
IST-IIs? DEC VT05, IBM 2260*, early Tek 4000, maybe a Uniscope? Just
about all the other collectable terminals would be quite a bit further
down the list.
*Although good luck getting the brain.
--
Will - WILL!