National 12" tubes for repairing terminals (was: VAX graphics)

[Mr Ian Primus]

--- On Mon, 2/15/10, Richard <legalize at xmission.com> wrote:
> > Or a repair job, come to think about it. I pulled a
> half pallet of new
> > National 12" tubes out of New Jersey a few months ago
> - a mix of
> > white, amber, and green - destined for replacements in
> terminals. The
> > electronics does not care about the phosphor color.
> And maybe the
> > repair depot techs did not care either.
> 
> What terminals were they intended for?

>From the looks of them, some were replacements for DEC VT220 type terminals (no mounting ears), and the rest were just regular, generic tubes for VT100 (ears) and everything else that uses that type of 12" tube. Heck, I've even replaced terminal tubes with tubes scavenged from 12" television sets. Mono tubes are pretty interchangeable. Phosphor color is dictated by the tube itself.

Once, for grins, I swapped a green tube from a banged up IBM 5151 display into a Zenith 12" television. I created the only TV with WordPerfect screen burn. The green. slow persistence phosphor made TV watching rather weird.

-Ian