VT100 and/or VT105 rescued from scrap

Rod Smallwood rodsmallwood52 at btinternet.com
Wed Oct 21 05:19:49 CDT 2015


VT 100's have one weak point. The monitor is a bought in part from Ball 
Bros.
The Ball supplied drive board burns up a diode and cap.  It will be 
obvious on inspection of the board.
I have never been able to get a circuit diagram or I'd do a replacement 
board.

Needless to say the DEC parts are mde of sterner stuff

Rod


On 20/10/2015 22:12, Ian Primus wrote:
> I can't seem to get the link to work with the pictures, so I don't
> know what the tube looks like, but sticky fluid is NOT an indication
> of a problem with the tube. Some tubes used a bonded safety glass, and
> that goo leaks out over time. But I've never seen a VT100 with such a
> tube installed. The most common cause of goo on the tube is going to
> be goo surrounding the 2nd anode connection (the suction cup). This is
> the plasticizers leeching out of the anode wiring, and gooing up the
> tube. The cable will be all sticky too. You can clean it off, I find
> that brake cleaner will dissolve it nicely. Just clean the area around
> the connection, don't clean the graphite coating off the main parts of
> the back of the tube - scrub only the clear glass areas.
>
> Without knowing what parts you have, I can't really tell you more than
> that, but, in general, I find that VT100's tend to work fine. There's
> nothing special I would do, just hook everything up and try it out.
> You're not going to blow anything up, assuming you've got parts
> connected properly.
>
> -Ian
>
> On Tue, Oct 20, 2015 at 12:11 PM, Lukas Kaminski
> <lukas.kaminski at krankikom.de> wrote:
>> Hello list,
>>
>> i got hands on several VT100 and VT105 parts. It SEEMS (at least to me)
>> to be one complete terminal without a power supply and some additional
>> parts. I took pictures of everything, which can be seen here:
>> https://antares.krankikom.de/index.php/s/vcIZuHbpsn3lSoL
>> (sorry for the self-signed certificate)
>>
>> I already found this interesting page:
>> https://github.com/bbenchoff/VT100Adapter, so i guess i have everything
>> to try to repair the VT100.
>>
>> But i never tried something like that, and i fear to break something as
>> soon i connect anything to power.
>>
>> How should i start? I especially don't know how to clean the boards,
>> check the eproms and i'm afraid that the CRT is broken, since it has a
>> sticky fluid on it.
>>
>> Bye,
>>
>> Lukas Kaminski



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