real terminals

phrakture · 2005-08-05 20:27:46

I have a feeling that maybe 3 people here have ever seen these... and I'm probably one of the rare few (un)fortunate to actually have a job requiring one of these bad boys on my desk.

http://choiceprinters.com/terminals/fr_top_dec.html

Needless to say, these things are awesome. The 220s are probably the best, though I've never seen a 500 series.

I've been trying to find a 220 or 420 to buy, but they're freakin expensive considering they're more outdated than my mom :shock:

citral · 2005-08-05 20:56:16

I always wondered how these things worked - you just stick 'em in the serial port of your computer, and you just start typing away? Or something? :?

phrakture · 2005-08-05 21:10:03

citral wrote:

I always wondered how these things worked - you just stick 'em in the serial port of your computer, and you just start typing away? Or something? :?

Well, yes and no... they connect via a serial line (when I had one at work, they had wired the building with serial lines in addition to ethernet).

Basically, (with some other parameters I can't recall) you just run "agetty ttyS0" and agetty will do everything it does on a virtual terminal, but across your serial line - actually getty was made for that sort of thing... the virtual consoles actual emulate a serial line.

So agetty waits for input on the serial line, you turn the terminal on and agetty goes "Aha! Input!....Welcome to <blark> running ArchLinux 0.7! username: " and from there it works exactly like running on a virtual terminal - though the DEC 420s actually had support to multiplex 4 terminals on one machine - the same way screen does. And there's alot of random configuration options you can setup on the terminals themselves to manage how they handle the serial IO. For instance, on one of the monochrome ones, there was a setting to tell the terminal which colors it should represent by bolding, blinking, underlining, etc

We used that for info displays (it was a manufacturing place, so errors were a big deal) - so the red text (an error) would do the silly reverse video blink and beep on each blink - irritating as hell, but it got the point across.

jackmetal · 2005-08-05 22:57:25

yep, I used those and also Wyse terminals. I even had a few until a couple years ago when I threw them away during a move. :-(

normc · 2005-08-06 00:50:14

I used to use something like those to connect to the main frame., I can't remember the details now too long ago. After that we had a card in the PC connected to the serial line and then later we just connected over the lan.

mezoko · 2005-08-06 01:17:46

Sorry for the stupid question but what exactly do they do?

tranquility · 2005-08-06 01:31:53

Actually, I think I'm one of the 3. Saw these on my campus' internet access building some years ago, maybe 8 years ago, and they had black background and phosphorous green chars, and a friend of mine knew how to 'hack' them and get them to beep very loudly for hours on end 8)

phrakture · 2005-08-06 01:36:35

msg43 wrote:

Sorry for the stupid question but what exactly do they do?

It's a terminal - the "virtual terminals" at Ctrl+Alt+1 through Ctrl+Alt+6 are actually just emulating what these things used to do... back in the day, these were computers. You'd use these things and connect to a mainframe.

mezoko · 2005-08-06 01:43:35

Oh interesting.

stavrosg · 2005-08-06 06:10:03

We used to use theese babies until last September in the University library to search the Library's database.
They also provided a web interface so you could search from home etc, but in the building there were all VT420s & 220 over the place.

They were eventually replaced by pcs running WinNT & Kiosk Firefox pointing to the above mentioned web interface.

I wouldn't mind having a 220 to monitor my server's syslog

jackmetal · 2005-08-06 12:34:43

I can't believe I threw all of mine out! I've probably installed a thousand of those things (and I couldn't count the number of driver/receiver chips I've soldered into those rascals after lighting strikes).. ;-)

dust · 2005-08-07 01:02:24

We have more of those around here than I can count. we use them in our warehouse where the grunts scan items and handle the shipping process through them.

iphitus · 2005-08-07 01:12:15

dust wrote:

We have more of those around here than I can count. we use them in our warehouse where the grunts scan items and handle the shipping process through them.

You stole my sig.

Yay.

Yeah, those terminals look cool. I'd like to get one just to play around with it.....

iphitus

tlilja · 2005-08-07 14:14:06

Whoo, wonderful, we still have those bad boys in our public library for database access. They work nicely, too bad the customers don't (know how to use something that doesn't have a mouse attached).

Gullible Jones · 2005-08-07 18:41:35

There used to be a bunch of those at the local public library - people didn't seem to have any problem using them, as far as I could ascertain... But then somebody got upgrade fever and replaced them all with new Dell boxen running Windows XP.

jellywerker · 2005-08-07 18:48:28

and what happened to the ones they threw away...

phrakture · 2005-08-08 15:16:00

Yeah, if anyone is selling any, I'd be willing to buy - most new ones online are like $150-$200, which isn't worth it just for novelty 8)

phrakture · 2005-08-09 20:18:58

Damn, even refurbished I can't find anything good - $150 or so for a vt220... ugh

iBertus · 2005-08-10 00:18:13

I used something similar to search inventory at Sears a few years back. We did pretty much everything with this sort of terminal until right before I left for school, then they switched to a bunch of Dell PCs with terminal emulation software.

The real terminals were faster than the Dells.

stavrosg · 2005-08-11 13:55:41

Yeah, but they didn't have fancy colours to keep the ignorant grunts happy ;-)

phrakture · 2005-09-16 03:41:28

for the record, ebayhas vt320s for around 5-20 USD.

Arch Linux

#1 2005-08-05 20:27:46

real terminals

#2 2005-08-05 20:56:16

Re: real terminals

#3 2005-08-05 21:10:03

Re: real terminals

#4 2005-08-05 22:57:25

Re: real terminals

#5 2005-08-06 00:50:14

Re: real terminals

#6 2005-08-06 01:17:46

Re: real terminals

#7 2005-08-06 01:31:53

Re: real terminals

#8 2005-08-06 01:36:35

Re: real terminals

#9 2005-08-06 01:43:35

Re: real terminals

#10 2005-08-06 06:10:03

Re: real terminals

#11 2005-08-06 12:34:43

Re: real terminals

#12 2005-08-07 01:02:24

Re: real terminals

#13 2005-08-07 01:12:15

Re: real terminals

#14 2005-08-07 14:14:06

Re: real terminals

#15 2005-08-07 18:41:35

Re: real terminals

#16 2005-08-07 18:48:28

Re: real terminals

#17 2005-08-08 15:16:00

Re: real terminals

#18 2005-08-09 20:18:58

Re: real terminals

#19 2005-08-10 00:18:13

Re: real terminals

#20 2005-08-11 13:55:41

Re: real terminals

#21 2005-09-16 03:41:28

Re: real terminals

Board footer