Way back in the day (late 70's) I worked on VAX systems for a large automaker whose management sincerely believed if you weren't using some monster from IBM you really weren't doing much important and thus there was never enough funding to go around to make sure everyone in the VAX group had a terminal on their desk. In my group there was some real status of having your own VT-100 on your desk and I still have the b/w photo of me at my desk the day I got mine.
Old video terminals are beautiful. I owned an ADM-3a for a period, but gave it to a fellow collector because the flyback transformer whine gave me headaches (he's old enough that he can't hear it). The VT100 definitely lives near the top of my wishlist... I've got a nice pair of Amiga machines, but I'd trade them both for a working VT100 with very little hesitation :)
Old video terminals demonstrate the beauty and timelessness of solid protocol design.<p>While old computers are effectively useless except as curiosities, an old video terminal is still just as good at its job as when new.
I used to connect terminals to this kind of benchtop data system:<p><a href="https://digital.sciencehistory.org/works/4j03d056k" rel="nofollow">https://digital.sciencehistory.org/works/4j03d056k</a><p>The first multi-user multi-tasking computer that would fit on a _desk_.<p>1MHz, 16K of 32bit memory.<p>Weighed over 50lbs.<p>It was designed to be compatible with the VT-100 since there was a mode where the system used special escape codes from the remote terminal to substitute for instrument function keys on the local console keyboard. Manually or by script once smart terminals came out.<p>To save memory each user could run multiple instances of the same basic program plus more than one basic program at a time.<p>His one chromatograph is mainly not pictured, it is to the left of the data system and weighed about 80lbs.
Brings back memories. I worked at Digital for a while, and we got those things at transfer cost. So all our team had them, until the VT220s came along. They could do lower case. !!<p>It has to be said, plastics technology has improved a bit. Those things weren't UV stabilized at all.
For anyone who never saw one: the original color was closer (but not the same!) to "IBM PC beige"; the cases yellowed due to sunlight, age, and (given the era), nicotine. The open base that shows the inside shows a color closer to the original.
I had a chance to buy a VT-101 a few months ago, but without the keyboard. Maybe the guy still has it.<p>I wonder how much effort it would take to connect it to a Raspberry Pi.