A good real terminal

[Dave McGuire]

On Apr 16, 2008, at 4:43 PM, Tony Duell wrote:
>>>>    DEC VT320 or VT420.  They are reliable, small, cheap, and  
>>>> easy to
>>>> find.
>>>
>>> And eat flyback trasnformers like they're going out of fashion.
>>
>>    I've seen exactly three fail...I've had dozens upon dozens of
>> those terminals go through my hands.  Mind you, I think that's an
>
> When I was at Bristol, we had DEC terminal everywhere. Mostly VT220s,
> which were extremely reliable, I think I had to fix _2_ in all my time
> there. I had a real VT100 on my bench, and there were a few  
> VT3xx's. All
> of the latter (perhaps 10 units) suffered from flyback problems.

   Ugh.  Bad production run, perhaps?

>>> FWIW, I've not managed to obtain any VT2xx or later DEC terminal
>>> with the
>>> exception of the VT240. THey're not that common in .uk
>>
>>    Really?  That surprises me.  They're all over the place here.  A
>> fellow with whom I've sadly lost touch had a warehouse containing
>> well over a thousand VT320s maybe eight years ago.  I think it was in
>> Virginia.  I wonder what happened to those.
>
> You could find them 8 yeas ago, can you find them _now_?

   Well, 8 years ago, I happened to know someone who happened to have  
a warehouse full of them.  They're available *now* on eBay all day long.

           -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL