VT100 - FUN

[rod]

I remember joining DEC in early October 1973. At the time I was working 
for a small local company called Newbury Labs.
We designed and built what were then called glass teletypes.  Twenty 
four lines of eighty characters, upwards scrolling only,shift registers 
for memory. TTL everything else.

Inside were I think three boards connected by a wiring loom. Edge 
connectors what edge connectors?.
Plus a monitor which was about the same performance as a portable TV and 
a Cherry Keyboard.
They worked and were a good price.

A guy I knew at DEC (sadly long since passed away) called me and said 
DEC were looking for a Sales Engineer to handle volume sales of terminals.
Must know about VDU's printing terminals etc. No sales experience needed 
as training would be given.

Within a week I was on the a plane to the US.
As the only terminal guy on the course it was arranged for me to go over 
the terminals  product line at Marlboro for product training.
I duly turned up and one of the design engineers took me down to a lab 
like room.
There set out in a row were a VT100, a VT52 and an LA36.

Out came the inevitable OHP slides (VT100 to begin with)  and off he 
went.  I just about fell off my chair.
A microprocessor (8085?) driven system with every feature you could 
imagine.
Very very advanced design, high quality board, pull down four pins and 
you could take the top off and get at everything
Plugable keyboard and so on.

All this and loads of expansion opportunities.
Totally awesome. Of course it blew everything away and became the 
industry standard.
Even in the then small UK market we sold thousands

Rod Smallwood


On 10/11/15 16:05, Sue Skonetski wrote:
> I remember at DEC when we all at VT100’s and then the big day came when we could upgrade to the “New Color” monitors Ah just to think of the orange glow of the words radiating from the screen.  Of course you could get green as well.  Not a lot of choice compared to today but ground breaking at the time.
> The company I used to work for still makes brand new VT’s since folks like them so much.  VT520 and the DEC style keyboards.  Some things never go out of style.
>
> sue
>
>
>
>> On Nov 10, 2015, at 10:42 AM, tony duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>>> They were for video in and out. You could sync the VT100  to a feed of
>>> mono video and the overlaid
>>> picture would appear on the screen and at the video out connector.
>> Actually, I beleive (confirmed by the VT100 tech manual and schematics)
>> that you have to sync the external video to the VT100 and not the other
>> way round. In other words, you take the signal from the Video Out socket,
>> extract the sync, then use that to sync the video source (camera or whatever)
>> that you feed into the Video In socket
>>
>>> The only secret was you had to set it for 50Hz .
>> It works perfectly well with the VT100 set to 60Hz, provided that is the vertical
>> rate of the external video source.
>>
>> -tony
> Sue Skonetski
>
> VP of Customer Advocacy
> Sue.Skonetski at vmssoftware.com
> Office: +1 (978) 451-0116
> Mobile: +1 (603) 494-9886
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> Mit freundlichen Grüßen – Avec mes meilleures salutations
>
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