One terminal system I haven?t seen mentioned is the VT LAN40. I bought one new in the
box about a year ago from Keyways ($400) and have found it to be very useful although it
is not contemporary with most of the DEC systems we discuss.
It needs a flat screen monitor, but can have multiple windows that allow cut and paste
between between serial ports and it can talk LAT, CTERM, Telnet on its ethernet port. It
has a mouse and does a great VT340 emulation. The unit can
Mounted vertically and take very little bench space, but as has been mentioned before the
keyboard is a typical VT420 sized keyboard.
It has a history buffer so has many of the advantages of a good software emulator but is
very accurate in the emulation. It gives me a single screen and keyboard that I can use to
simultaneously work with my RSX11M+ (via LAT), the RT-11 MINC via serial and the two VAXes
and any RPi?s running linux.
The CPU is a little slow but response is acceptable. The ROMs in it might have bit a
good starting point for reverse engineering.
I think Keyways has a number of them and believe he will sell to hobbyists at the lower
price above.
I found this description at
https://vt100.net/dec/vt_history
VT LAN40
In February 1995, Digital announced the VT LAN40, a colour windowing network terminal.
This device was a diskless PC, containing Windows 3.1 in ROM, and supporting up to eight
terminal sessions over LAT, DECnet, TCP/IP or serial line, using TD/SMP. The system box
and mouse had a suggested list price of $890. It connected to standard PC keyboards and
monitors.
Mark