14 Jan
2026
14 Jan
'26
12:28 p.m.
On Jan 14, 2026, at 3:03 PM, Wayne S
<wayne.sudol(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
Paul, knowing that you worked with typset-11 , would you know of a copy of the software
that’s available? Another list member has acquired a vt52 and asked what it was used for.
Typeset-11 came up.
You mean VT61? VT52 is a regular terminal. VT61/t is one of the two Typeset-11 specific
terminals (the low end one, for use by classified ad takers and also used by reporters
with modest editing requirements). The VT71/t is the fancy editing terminal. To make
things confusing, Bitsavers has a VT21 which I think is a prototype of the VT71, I never
saw it as an actual device. And the VT72 as far as I know is a VT71 with a different
color scheme, intended for a VMS based typesetting system. I don't remember if that
ever shipped.
As for the software, I have occasionally searched for it but seen no evidence of a copy
anywhere. At one point I talked to the curator of a Massachusetts printing technology
museum who apparently at one time had a Typeset-11 system, but got rid of it because
computers weren't their thing and apparently does not have anything left of it.
It would be really neat if anything could be found. The software is a collection of
applications running on RSX-11/D or IAS, including a couple of unusual I/O devices. Some
of it could probably be reconstructed if the software could be found. Emulating a
typesetter would be an interesting problem given that they all had vendor-dependent coding
and possibly customer-dependent coding (each customer would order a particular set of
fonts). The VT71 hardware documentation exists on Bitsavers; I haven't found the
firmware either, though a Typeset-11 system would have that since it's downloaded. I
actually asked the author of that code about it but it doesn't sound like he has a
copy.
paul