From the day I saw the first complete VT100 prototype sitting on the bench
at the Digital Terminals Product Line offices in Marlboro Mass. I have
always considered the VT100 to be the classic terminal. It led the way for
many years and VT100 compatibility was universal.
No other terminal had the impact VT100 did. I can't remember how many
thousand I sold in the UK whilst at DEC but it was lots.
You cannot get a more classic icon in computing than the DEC VT100.
I have kinda mixed feelings about the VT100, possibly coloured by
having to deal with a large batch of secondhand, secondgrade examples
at college. The cases were fragile and yellowed and the keyboards
often could not cope with student use. There were a lot of minor
video faults, typically vertical linearity. Older and grottier ADM5
terminals seemed to be built like tanks in comparison.
The thing that irritated me the most was the loud and grating beep.
They seemed slow for a given bitrate compared to other terminals,
even after turning off the smooth scroll (which was quite cool if
you ever had time to wait for it which noone ever did).
The VT100 protocol was a great step forward but it seemed slightly
over-complicated and bloated. A pity that many writers of terminal
emulators and terminal driver software failed to grasp the point
of it and came up with broken implementations.
I was much happier with the VT220 which seemed to solve a lot of the
version 1.0 issues of the VT100. However, it didn't really look like
a terminal. Maybe a VT220 in a Commodore PET case would better fit
the bill :-)
I have an ADM5 and a VT220 but I would not be interested in having
a VT100.
Regards,
Peter Coghlan.