VT100 keyboard (source?)

[Paul Anderson]

The cable for the RX01/02 to the various interfaces is the BC05L-15. Either
cable will work on them.

Paul


On Wed, Aug 19, 2015 at 4:48 PM, Brent Hilpert <hilpert at cs.ubc.ca> wrote:

> On 2015-Aug-19, at 2:17 PM, Ethan Dicks wrote:
> > On Wed, Aug 19, 2015 at 5:09 PM, Brent Hilpert <hilpert at cs.ubc.ca>
> wrote:
> >> Would anyone have a surplus-to-needs, or know of a source for, a VT100
> keyboard?
> >
> > I have terminals and keyboards, but I don't know that I have more
> > working keyboards than working terminals.
> >
> >> This would actually be for the DECmateI/VT278 I mentioned on the list a
> couple weeks ago, Rob and I are looking into doing something with it.
> >
> > Cool.  I have one of those myself - just the basics - no addon cards,
> > one set of floppies (room in the pedestal to add more), but I do have
> > the "desk" upgrade (a metal clip that mounts where the keyboard tray
> > normally goes, and a desk top and left-side leg so you have a
> > workspace right in front of you rather than hunching up in front of
> > the pedestal).
> >
> >> Alternatively, does anyone know if there is any degree of signalling
> compatibility between the VT100 and VT220/320 keyboards?
> >
> > None.  The VT100 keyboard is 3-wire: power, ground, and bidirectional
> > data with a dumb hardware UART in the keyboard; the VT220/320
> > keyboards (LK201 et al.) have a 4-wire interface with power, ground,
> > tx, and rx, and a sophisticated (by comparison) character protocol.
> >
> >> Those RX floppies in the pedestal on ebay mentioned a week
> >> or two ago were just what was needed to complete it,
> >> as they actually looked like they were part of a 278
> >
> > Yes.  Except for missing the "wood" top, that did look to me like a
> > VT278 floppy pedestal.  You don't "need" that if you have room for a
> > side-by-side RX01 or RX02.  That pedestal is just mounting and
> > packaging (along with a passive DB25<->Berg 40 adapter).  You could
> > use the same floppy cabinet as a MINC-11 with (AFAIK) the same cables.
> > I think there is only one DEC standard for running an RX drive over
> > DB25.  The only part that might matter is RX01 vs RX02 (I _think_
> > MINCs came with either by the end).  Either way, the floppy drive guts
> > are all the same across all the lines.  You can just get them in 3
> > packages (rack-mount, tabletop, or pedestal).  It's only about
> > mounting (and 40-pin internal vs 25-pin external).
>
> Thanks, that was a question I had been intending to ask, but to confirm:
> If one obtained (as appropriate) bare RX01/2 floppy drive(s), it would
> just be a matter of power supply for the floppies, and passive cabling to
> interface the drives to the CPU/display?
> I actually have the DB25-to-DC37 cable that goes between the disk unit and
> the DC37 connector on the CPU/display unit.
>
> If we move this along we may be asking for system software in the future,
> I haven't looked at what may be readily available (i.e. bitsavers) as yet.
>
>