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/

I think you're right! Looking at that manual, it was probably a KVGT unit, and the Tek display was called a VT01. Thanks!

My question was not intended to be limited to the VT14 AS SUPPLIED! Rather, could the VT14 have been relatively easily modified (i.e. without major changes AND without having to reverse the changes OTHER than to removing them with ONLY a screwdriver or other similar tool within about 30 minutes) to be able to run PDP-8 software. The example I provided for the VT103 included modification of the backplane CPU could use was supported rather than only the 256 KB of memory which was supported by the DEC configuration) did not prevent any prior use of the VT103 since using only a 256 KB memory board was backward compatible. IN ADDITION note that since your last sentence suggests that the VT103 is not "usable as a general-purpose computer" even in its original configuration as supplied by DEC, it seems helpful to correct that (possible?) misunderstanding! Although the exercise might have been painful (in the extreme), using a TU-58 drive to run RT-11 was possible - the user just had to be a bit patient and remember that just booting RT-11 could take many minutes. At that point, (with the TU-58) the VT103 was already a general-purpose computer, but really very useful. Adding the dual board RX02 Qbus controller (which even the power supply of the VT103 could easily support - although the user would need to spend up to a minute to manually type in the boot code when the CPU card was just a dual board, but that was still much less time than to boot with a TU-58) along the external RX02 dual drive transformed the VT103 into a very usable (if slow) general-purpose computer, although at higher cost than a TU-58 drive. BUT, adding a third party hard disk drive controller (I did that for both myself and a number of VT103s for a commercial outfit) which included a boot ROM for an MSCP device (which was extremely helpful when only dual board DEC CPUs were being used which had no boot ROM - DEC did supply them with quad board CPUs) and also placing a 10 MB ST512 drive just below the tube of the VT103 which was compatible with that third party hard disk controller instantly made the VT103 into a very usable general-purpose computer. Later, substituting instead a CQD 220M/T host adapter and a 3.5" SCSI hard drive provided the VT103 with more than sufficient disk capacity. SO if the VT14 could not be easily adapter to run PDP-8 software, then I agree that is was not in the same sort of ball park as was the VT103 which could already run PDP-11 software (even if painfully) in the original DEC configuration. I did appreciate the clarification. Jerome Fine