DEC VT320 Terminal

Hardware
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Purely because LGR Just put a video out. Anyone here have memories of using these things? Better yet does anyone have any right now? I like that Clint was able to use a device to get wifi going on it, but I have to wonder what other uses they could be put towards, If nothing else using as set dressing for an indie film or youtube project would be interesting.

However I’m wondering, in today’s technological climate that is smartphone centric? What practical use would a terminal have? Granted I could totally see me using one of these as a dedicated ‘this is me word-processing’ by having it telnet into another computer on the local network and run nano, or some other linux terminal program. Though that now has me wondering how this would do if using tmux.

Oh man it sucks having an expensive set of interests and basically no money or space. I have a lot of ideas but no real way to see how viable they are.

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I wish I had one. I had a Wyse version many years ago, but gave it up because my dad wanted it. I used to use them in college.

Today, I would use it to connect to something like an RC2014 or my Altair-Duino for that “full retro feel”.

Good luck getting one today. Clint must have gotten really lucky somehow.

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Lots of us still have serial terminals - I have a Wyse, but wanted a DEC one for a long time. However what I mostly use is a Raspberry Pi with 4 x USB Serial dongles for my little retro collection.

Many years back I did use real serial terminals though but not for very long. I started “proper” computing on an Apple II, then moved to TTY 33’s (ugh) at uni, then serial terminals with stuff like CP/M and the uni PDP11/40 Unix system. a few years later it was Sun workstations though…

Today? I still use minicom which is a serial terminal program that runs under Linux - there are many variants for all platforms. ASCII art isn’t dead yet … And there is even a PacMan game that runs on a serial terminal, however the retro scene is where they’re at …

https://unicorn.drogon.net/mandel.txt

Cheers,

-Gordon

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My college had a lot of these VT320s for accessing the VAX computers on campus (along with VT110s). They’re great little devices and I would love to find one in the wild (Though I have an ADM-11 that I’m most happy with).

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Funnily enough I also used Omniterm to get on to the VAX / Sun SPARC machines in college as well. But that font was really, really fuzzy on my unmodified Atari 800XL.

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Our public library had dozens of these. Great fun.

I would love to have a few of these. I’d set them up around the house with terminal internet access.

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I’ve got something like this, from work when they were throwing them all out. I think it’s just a VT220 though… checks… no, it is indeed a VT320, but looks like it might be a green-screen one. It’s got a sticky label:
BRMC MASTER FEP
which is a hint. I’ve not powered it on for years, perhaps since getting it. But it’s there when I need it!

I’ve also got a Minitel terminal - a Terminatel!

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Be still my beating heart. I have many nostalgic memories of green screen monochrome. Pair that with the smoothness in text scrolling shown. Yes. I have no real ability to use and no place to put one, but I would definitely like one.

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Try this company if you are still interested in a terminal!

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Thanks!!

(I was just going to write “Thanks!!” but the forum software demanded more characters)

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oh my I didn’t know anyone did that.

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I have a VT320, but the last time I powered it on something went “bang” in the power supply and I haven’t tried to fix it yet.
I also have a VT510, in unknown but presumably “it worked the last time” condition.

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I have one each of VT100, VT220, VT320, VT420.

What to use them for? Retrocomputing, of course! Old software looks much better on a real terminal.

Or get an extra Linux (MacOS, BSD, etc) shell prompt on the side. Emulate a terminal emulator, if you will.

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Oh wow - the VT510 has a built in calculator function with octal and hex conversion - immediately useful and a totally justifiable purchase, at £175 and up.

Digital’s Video Terminals

VT510 Video Terminal Programmers Information (PDF)

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I currently have my VT320 hooked up to my PiDP-8.
I even went so far to create a /etc/issue for the Pi with a nice ASCII art login screen.

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But can you time share on PiDP-8 with TSS/8? Will the hardware let you have more serial ports like the PDP-8 could?

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I didn’t take it that far. The terminal is hooked up as a terminal to the Pi. I can then access the console of the PDP-8 emulator.

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I would probably just make a nice case for a pi zero to bolt onto the terminal and use as a full TUI device, because why not?

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Actually, on the original PiDP-8, you had to break off two resistors and rewire a few jumpers on the Pi-board for a single, true serial connection. However, there are better ways about this now (pty and /dev/ttyUSB0). You may in fact conncet more than a single console via pty, provided you’re running a multiuser OS on the emulated PDP-8. So, I guess, time sharing with TSS/8 should be posible.