PDP-8 VT8-E

Responding to myself here: For the first time ever, I managed to find something at least similar to my departed terminal. For those interested, take a look at the Computer Displays, Inc ARDS picture on this page: https://design.osu.edu/carlson/history/lesson3.html My recollection of the one that I had is that the bottom chassis wasn't much wider than the keyboard, vs. the substantially wider chassis on the ARDS. Also, I think that mine had black-painted sheet metal around the keyboard and white-painted sheet metal elsewhere. The Tek storage display unit looked about the same. I recall it having a DEC dataplate on the back, and it came along with a box of spare flip chips. So, I'm guessing that it was at least contemporary to the PDP-8, if not meant to be used with it. I don't have a good feeling for how much circuitry it had inside. I don't think it could have been as smart as a VT8, given the small flip-chip backplane in it. I got it for free off a junk pile while I was busy flunking out of Caltech, so given the source, it could have been a prototype or even locally-built. I think I either gave it away or sold it along with a bunch of other stuff at close to scrap value. I hope that it got rescued instead of scrapped. -- Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net> http://www.nf6x.net/