VT52 keyboard question

[Warner Losh]

On Tue, Mar 14, 2017 at 7:20 AM, Paul Koning via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
>> On Mar 13, 2017, at 5:07 PM, Henk Gooijen via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>>
>> ...
>> My guess is that the VT52, VT55, VT05 and LA30 are identical.
>
> No, fortunately not.  The LA30 was notorious for having a very bad and very unreliable keyboard.  Some GT40s had that same keyboard as well, I don't remember if that changed later.  The keycap shapes were different too: larger and more square with sharper corners.

I know that back in the day, we had about a dozen VT52 and 3 VT50's.
They were the same keyboard, but with different internal circuit
boards (we had a few former VT50's that were upgraded to VT52's, at
least according to the techs that I worked with at the time). I still
remember having to edit my FORTRAN code for a while on a UPPERCASE
ONLY terminal until I got enough seniority to warrant moving up a
dual-case terminal.... thankfully these were all replaced by VT100s
over the years I worked there and my role shifted a bit to needing a
VT100 to support a customer that had an application that used the
advanced features of the VT100: double size characters, line drawing
boxes, etc.

Man, that was a million years ago...

Warner