VT100's

[Bob Smith]

My recollections, having worked for Stockebra in the comm group when
he started the 50.
These are all recollections, from my time working at DEC, no looking
at history books, no interweb tube alta vista quesries.

50 was a quite brilliant limited capability terminal, that could
replace the OEM'd VTs that were are at the time.
It was supposed to offer a thermal printer iirc, but that got pushed to 52.
52 was a reengineered/recpacked more easily manufactured unit.
Both were relative light compared to the other bulky ones that were
more sleek and lots heavier.
WE could sling a 50/52 around from lab to lab with TTY connections,
RS232 connections, and they just worked when we hooked them up.
We used a 52 as the base for the VT78 - better psu in the 52 is what I
recall for that decision.
The 100 models were - at the time - like something out of scifi, and
something like the Heath product.
Follow on models were even more scifi and fantastic.
So, a little geezing a tiny bit of tech, and just anecdotal rememberance.
I like the 220/240 models me self.
bb
On Thu, Sep 6, 2018 at 7:24 PM Steve Malikoff via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
> Will said
> >> Compared to many of the others available at the time, it seemed to me to be:
> >>
> >> 1.  expensive
> >
> > Keep in mind that this is largely irrelevant. Terminals were often
> > used as bargaining chips when large systems were purchased. Salesmen
> > could "throw in" some number of terminals with a system, in order to
> > make a sale. If a business was being hard-nosed about the sale of
> > potential large VAX system, the salesmen could perhaps "sweeten" the
> > deal with ten or twenty bonus VT100s, free. All the profit was in the
> > CPUs, or more importantly, in the disk and tape farms (or to be really
> > fair about this, the service).
>
>
> Along that line, here is a page from a DEC sales catalog offering VT52's with "It's cheaper by the 4-pack":
> http://www.surfacezero.com/g503/data/500/VT52_4-pack.jpg
>
> Steve
>