Getting online with a DEC VT-220 terminal

Eeeyyy it's the terminal software that inspired the Unified Operating System we see in Fallout's terminals!

Did you know?

"warranty void if removed" stickers are illegal.

ATDT means ATtention Dial Tone. ATDP is ATtention Dial Pulse

Nothing to do with character sets.

Late 80s they had the 320 and by early 90s the 420. I have both.

Got a green wy-30 older than the vt standard

There is no key labeled ESC on the VT220, but in VT100 mode the F11 key functions as one. The VT220 terminal was clearly designed for the VAX/VMS era, since on the earlier DEC-20/TOPS-20 the escape key was extensively used. The Wikipedia VT220 article has a separate paragraph titled the "Escape key controversy".

Digital Equipment Corporation, not Digital Electronics Corporation – That looks like it was from a Word Processing System (WPS) – pronounced "WOOPS". These were PDP 11/23 or MicroVax machines that would sit under the desk. The PF1 key was called the "gold key" which put the keypad in the second state. What distinguishes the keyboard is the labels on the keys, with the "red" and "green" keys inserting fonts, styles, and formatting. You had WPS as part of the AllIn1 suite on the VAX, so the key assignments matched the stand alone machine.

The WPS terminal was a VT220, but wouldn't have the VT220 badge on the front.

I still have the muscle memory for the EDT keypad and can move and edit a file faster than I can in vim.

Cool thing I learned when I was going to SUNY at Buffalo back in the mid 80's was definineing the keypad to execute funtions in DCL. So, when at the command line, I had a key defined to "show default" and other functions. Cool stuff.

I don't think the amber (or white) phosphor was as efficient. As a result, the tube had to pump more electrons into them to get any kind of reasonable brightness. That affected the life of both the electron gun and the phosphor. Personally, I liked green the most. The amber and white ones I worked with seem to have a long persistence that made fast changes (like scrolling) and issue. Plus, I find green more calming.

DEC used RJ connectors but note the tab will be to one side so they aren’t quite compatible with regular phone or Ethernet cables.

Phone cable split the second pair. Pin 2 & 3 are line one. Pin 1 & 4 are line 2. This cable is probably 1 to 1 pinout.

Used to run a BBS from my first house. Playing LORD was fun.

I wish there was still a VCF here in the PNW

VT52 or bust 😉

Thanks for the content.
Keep up the good work.
בס'ד

“Lets play Global Thermonuclear War”

Great to see an old VT220 terminal. I remember when we had our DEC Alpha server in the data center for our student records, class registration, campus email, and DECWrite. We used VT220 and more advanced DEC terminals campus wide at the state run community college I worked at in the Computer Services Division from 1998 until 2012, when I retired. When I started working at the college, we were phasing out terminals and moving access to the DEC Alpha over to PCs and Windows NT 4.0 and then Windows 2000 Professional and other iterations of Windows software over the years, accessing the DEC Alpha over Ethernet. And we moved email over to Microsoft Exchange Servers in the data center and Outlook and word processing over to WordPerfect, then to Microsoft Word on student, faculty, and staff computers. It was a royal pain ripping out all of the old serial cabling and removing all of the DEC terminals and hauling them in a tractor trailer to state surplus. It was sort of sad seeing the old terminals go away, but we were excited with the new stuff. Around 2009, our student and business office server software moved over to Oracle SPARC servers and we retired the Alpha. About three years after I retired, the student and business office stuff moved over to the state education department's massive Intel x64 server farm and accessed remotely by the campus over a AT&T 100 Gig Metro Ethernet fiber optic circuit. I still have fond memories of the DEC terminal and Alpha server days. I never thought that we would see such advancements in networking and computing as we have today when I first started working at the college.

Wouldn't it be fun to connect this to the SWTPC 6800 you have and show off the pair together in a vintage configuration!?!

Ahhh, this takes me back. In college, I used lots of random terminals to get on the various central campus mainframes. VT220 was one of the ones I most coveted, since (a) they had that relaxing amber color, and most importantly, (b) they could do a blazing 19200bps (which was pretty much the highest you could get without being directly on a console). If I was unlucky, I'd be stuck on something that maxed out at 2400.

if you think thats bad Adrian, i used a teletype at 50 baud via the 20ma current loop. it worked but strictly serial display no upward linefeeds available.and clearscreen just printed linefeeds. so wasted a LOT of paper. LMAO
I also ran a fidonet BBS for 5 years back in the day.

You should try getting on the internet with elinks.

Wow, what a great find.
I did have to install something like this in 1988. Not using a DEC, but a PC setup. 386-16, with 4M RAM, 40MB Hard Drive. A multi serial card, and operating system called PC-MOS (does anyone remember that one??), and Three Terminals.
That was so cutting edge at the time, and impressed the hell out of the customer. Don't ask about the speed. But the main machine could switch to each user terminal and see what they were doing, and fix any problems, and the O/S was basically a multitasker running individual MSDOS machines in memory. Cost about AU$15,000 (from memory) at the time.

And you're cheating using that wifi modem. Get and acoustic coupler and watch the text slowly scroll down the screen. Or turn the speed down to 300bps.

Ha. These were all over the place in the 80s. My university was full of these and like many places was a DEC customer since the PDP 7 or so days in the 1970s. My step dad was one of the IT people who DEC regularly courted to keep the dollars moving.

These were well engineered like all DEC hardware but to a price point. They were designed for servicing and were evolved from the older VT100 line of classic terminals. The keyboards were shitty rubber domes like every one else’s at this point. Durable but crap to type on. Indeed there were swivel stands but they cost extra. These didn’t have too much burn in trouble except after YEARS of usage. They were mostly amber but green and white were also available. The cables were like telephone cables but not the same.