A good real terminal

[Gordon JC Pearce]

On Thu, 2008-04-17 at 22:30 +0100, Tony Duell wrote:
> > The two faults I remember with VT220 terminals were dead 9636/9737
> > EIA chips, and loss of horizontal hold.  It was tough getting the
> > old EIA chips out to mount sockets (must have had heavy copper
> > inner layers on the mainboard PCB), but once that was done, those
> > were easy to fix.  We only lost about one a year, anyway.  The
> > video, I was never able to fix myself with what I knew then.  Perhaps
> > I could fix it now.
> 
> I've had to repair a few VT220s with no horizontal hold. It seems to be 
> due to bad contact at the horizontal hold preset. Pull the case, note the 
> positon of this preset, and turn it from end to end a few times, finally 
> putting it back to the original postion. Power up and most likely the 
> picture will be locked. If it is, put the case back on. 

<aol>me too</aol>

I gave them a scoosh of pot cleaner and worked them backwards and
forwards before returning to approximately the original position.  They
always worked for years after that.  Same goes for the DECMate monitors
(VR201?).  They're nearly the same shape and have nearly the same
monitor chassis.  Strange that... ;-)

Gordon