Talk:VT100

Confirmation for the Heath comment?
The only Heathkit terminals I ever saw emulated the DEC VT52 and later the VT100. The only X3.64 support on them was in their VT100 emulation... the earlier VT52-compatibles didn't support it. --24.27.74.244 17:56, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

ANSI X3.64
Why does ANSI X3.64 redirect here? That seems strange. Where did the original article go? Kim Bruning 11:02, 23 April 2006 (UTC)


 * There was no original article. This is currently the most relevant article to X3.64, but yes, we could do with a stub instead of the redirect. --StuartBrady 12:25, 23 April 2006 (UTC)


 * It redirects to ANSI escape code, which is closer. Tedickey (talk) 11:22, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Pic?
Anyone have a pic to add? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 198.236.216.252 (talk • contribs).


 * A photograph would be nice. (Make sure it's GFDL/CC/PD, though!) --StuartBrady (Talk) 22:54, 19 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Concur -- I had to concern myself with VT-100 compatibility for a number of years, but I've never actually seen one... AnonMoos 18:39, 16 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Could swear blind that Bangor University (Wales) still had a little herd of these in it's science library when I left in 2003 - definitely VT100s not 220s, too... maybe they're still there, given that they would have been about 20 years old already, why throw them away at 24? (They do have a small computer science museum exhibit area there, perhaps they're part of a living museum?)
 * Very nice, quick and easy to use for browsing the library catalogue & remote ones, checking email or text-based web browsing (!), knew they were old but never realised they were quite so ancient. Was round that way quite recently but dunno if I'll get a chance to go past again anytime soon unfortunately, but if I do I'll see if I can nip in and grab a picture or two. -tahrey

VT100 Assembly
My first job out of school was at Digital's Albuquerque facility where the VT100s were assembled. Oh the memories......... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.247.5.125 (talk) 03:24, 30 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Rock on! Those were great machines, which I got to know in the late '80s.  The key action was very smooth.  Afalbrig (talk) 09:11, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Alternate character set
The box drawing characters article lists some of the VT100 alternate characters, but not all of them, and I'm not sure if they should be listed somewhere. I'm also not sure if they would belong here, or in the article on X3.64 — IIRC, ECMA-48 refers to an alternate character set, but does not list the actual characters. The characters, as copied from an xterm:

—StuartBrady (Talk) 14:30, 25 January 2008 (UTC)


 * VT100.net has several manuals which show these characters. Outside of the line-drawing characters, and the ones that the curses library uses, they're of limited interest. Tedickey (talk) 15:08, 25 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, given that there are such articles as ZX Spectrum character set or PETSCII, I doubt that including the table above into the article will do any harm. (And it will surely save me a bit of time when I’d be looking for it again.)  — Ivan Shmakov (d ▞ c) 19:35, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Color?
I'm guessing VT100 had a monochrome display, but what color was it? Green on black? Wipe (talk) 04:03, 22 February 2008 (UTC)


 * It depended on the phosphor used. DEC's looked (to me) as if they had a slight blueish or cyan tint.  It was quite noticeable when the display was put into reverse video, making the "white" fill the background rather than the text. There's probably a reliable source for that color....  Clones such as the CIT Itoh tended to be whiter (the ones I knew about, at any rate - this example shows blue). Tedickey (talk) 11:15, 22 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I see, thanks. There were terminal clones made in the Soviet Union also, their phosphor could have been anything then. :) I was just wondering what the original Tetris would have looked like... Wipe (talk) 19:03, 29 February 2008 (UTC)


 * The Tetris topic says the game came out in 1985, which would have been targeted toward IBM PC's, e.g., with CGA graphics. That's a lot different from a VT100 running on a 9600bd serial connection.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tedickey (talk • contribs) 00:35, 1 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I mean the very first Tetris (before a PC version), said to have been written for "Elektronika 60", a PDP-11 clone. Of course, it would require some detective work to find out exactly which kind of terminal Pajitnov used. He probably gets a lot of e-mail these days. ;) Wipe (talk) 21:33, 2 March 2008 (UTC)


 * The topic says - 15IE-00-013 terminal - which on the first link http://www.blinkenlights.de/arcade/links.en.html notes that it was monochrome (green) 24x80 Tedickey (talk) 21:41, 2 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Oh yes, good. That page mentions the 15IE-0003 terminal and the Elektronika 60 article mentions a 15IE-00-013, likely a clone of a later terminal in the VT series. The Tetris article has a link to Vadim Gerasimov's writing where he actually describes the original game: "The MS DOS version is quite different from the Electronica 60 draft which initially had just the glass and a score count. That version worked on a monochromatic (green/black) alphanumeric display." I'll add that information to the Tetris article. This VT100 article could still use some improvement, though. Wipe (talk) 22:20, 2 March 2008 (UTC)


 * According to the VT100 Series Video Terminal Technical Manual, VT100s used P4 phosphor, which is white. &mdash;Vt100 (talk) 15:52, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

VT100 vs Heath
The comment appears to be referring to the Heath Company H19, which was announced in 1979. While X3.64 is said to have been based on VT100, it (and in turn X3.64 the basis for ISO 6429) do not implement all of VT100, e.g., the scrolling. (It would be nice to have a reliable source giving the text of X3.64). The comment in context can be rephrased to point out that the H19 was perhaps the first terminal based on X3.64 Tedickey (talk) 00:11, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
 * THE DESKTOP COMPUTER AS A NETWORK PARTICIPANT
 * VT: a virtual terminal window package for UNIX
 * Compupro computers and docs
 * About COMMSOFT

Shuford for example, gives this, which contains sequences that the VT100 did not support. Tedickey (talk) 00:14, 11 March 2008 (UTC)


 * The more I read that entire sentence, the more I dislike it. It appears to be giving the impression that Heath beat DEC to market with a terminal that supported X3.64 sequences, but the H19 doesn't fit that bill. And what does "the standard proposed by ANSI in X3.64" mean? X3.64 is a standard, whether the market took it up or not (and of course it did, in a big way). &mdash;Vt100 (talk) 12:21, 17 March 2008 (UTC)


 * As I noted, VT100 was not based on X3.64, since it preceded it (and they're distinct, each containing features not in the other). So a clarification or rewording of the sentence should point that out.  Heath's terminal is an example of one that came after the standard and incorporated features (and again, it's not the same as the standard).  Tedickey (talk) 16:02, 17 March 2008 (UTC)


 * The VT100 User Guide claims conformance to X3.64-1977 in chapter 3. &mdash;Vt100 (talk) 18:30, 17 March 2008 (UTC)


 * That's marketing. The design and implementation was done the year before the standard was released.  (Conformance means only that it doesn't implement codes which conflict with the standard, does not guarantee any particular amount of adherance beyond that.  It would be interesting to construct a table of codes from different conforming terminals which conflict with each other ;-) Tedickey (talk) 19:22, 17 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I should have emphasised the important bit: X3.64-1977. The standard was apparently already issued when the VT100 was released. Googling suggests that either this is a common typo (from rushing to print perhaps?) or that X3.64-1979 was actually the second issue of this standard. Off the top of my head, the only conflict between X3.64 and VT100 is ESC Z (DECID), which was a VT52-compatibility hack that was only discarded in the VT500 Series. (Your winky duly noted!) &mdash;Vt100 (talk) 19:35, 17 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Google suggests, but there are a lot of suggestions, e.g., these which suggest that there is some confusion with ANSI X3.41-1977:, , per Shuford's comment Tedickey (talk) 20:15, 17 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, I'm quoting a DEC manual at least, not Joe Random's page-o-confusion, and bear in mind that any reference from after mid-1979 would be bound to cite X3.64-1979 rather than -1977 (as the VT220 manuals do, for instance). I have X3.64-1979 in front of me and it doesn't mention a previous version, but I can't be sure that it would do, if there had been one. So it appears we still have no way of rephrasing that sentence in a way that is better backed up. Ho hum. &mdash;Vt100 (talk) 20:48, 17 March 2008 (UTC)


 * If there were a revision, I'd expect to come across some comment about it, as I've seen about X3.4 Tedickey (talk) 22:10, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

The standards involved are a very incestuous bunch, ANSI, ECMA and ISO all released their own versions of the standards and parts of them. Basically ECMA-48 is the same as ISO/IEC 6429. and ECMA-35 is the same as ISO-2022 with ANSI X3.64 being the combination of both of those into one standard. Later versions are precisely, word for word, identical. ECMA-35 1st Edition which was released in 1971 describes the character set facilities of the VT100 exactly. The 2nd edition is closer to the VT220's setup. Unfortunately ECMA-48 1st edition (1976) seems to have been lost but the 2nd Edition is consistent with this. So the "standard" predates the VT100, if you choose the right name for it... NB: The ECMA versions are available for free download from the ECMA website, the ISO versions still have to be paid for, even in these days of zero cost distribution. 90.195.73.66 (talk) 07:52, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

baud rate of VT52
Recent edit asserts that VT52 communicated up to 19.2KB. The manual, etc., says 9.6KB.
 * On page 21 of the manual, it lists 19200 as one of the available speeds. A ir ♠  C ombat  What'sup, dog? 05:39, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

relationship between ANSI X3.64 and ECMA-48
There is no reliable source given to equate ANSI X3.64 and ECMA-48. (The ANSI escape code topic states that ANSI adopted ECMA-48 in 1981, but provides no source; the sources for VT100 simply state "ANSI X3.64"). TEDickey (talk) 20:19, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Tektronix 4014 emulation
Some Web searching indicates that a company named Digital Engineering came out with a terminal, based on a VT100, that could also emulate a Tektronix 4014 - see, for example, this Computerworld advertisement. There's a section for them on Bitsavers.

But, in the ad, they explicitly say "Not Digital Equipment, mind you. Digital Engineering.", so that's not exactly a VT100 variant in the sense that various DEC products are. Guy Harris (talk) 21:58, 26 July 2022 (UTC)


 * Using PDP-11 as an example, perhaps someone might be motivated to do the same for this topic. But that would be another section. TEDickey (talk) 22:08, 26 July 2022 (UTC)
 * "But that would be another section." Exactly. Guy Harris (talk) 22:53, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

VT100 options and third party cards
Hi, I own a VT100 and while yes it's extremely hard to get the names of the third party cards sold I do actually own a card manufactured by a third party that is supposedly to add the ability to use a decwriter as a "printer" to the terminal. I haven't gotten that card working, nor have I actually gone searching for similar cards but I do know they exist. I provided a wikimedia person some pictures of my terminal, and over the next days, months hopefully I can expand this wikipedia page. I really think that the VT1XX-AB (advanced video option) deserves a page of its own because of the various functionalities you can toggle with it. They're referenced in some of the guides floating online, some things like the VT100 field guide has been lost but for the most part from personal experience I can tell you that the VT101/VT102 manuals are pretty much a drop in equivalent since those terminals don't really have that much of a difference in terms of physical layout. I find that this terminal doesn't have a lot of good photographs, and so I'm extremely lucky to have a VT100-AA with a DOM of October 1982 to hopefully expand this page (not self citing but using the markings on the board to find things like the manuals to cite for functionality). Ambervt100 (talk) 20:21, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Ambervt100, things that are worth writing about need to have secondary sources first. 199.80.8.254 (talk) 20:22, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Good call, the primary sources (like DEC documentation) can be a pain to read and interpret. Sigh, I think it's gonna be a pain to find secondary sources, unless forums count as secondary sources? Trying to avoid the whole cyclic wikipedia scandals on this page. I've seen plenty of examples of that and want to avoid poisoning the well especially on a terminal that I find so fascinating. Like yeah you can imply that the layout of the terminal helped further the development of the QWERTY layout but unless there's an expert historian saying that it'll just be baseless. Ugh, I'll try to find them because I really do want to expand on things like the VT1XX-AB and its various configurations in SETUP-A and SETUP-B. I find the setup modes to be hard to grasp as well, and personally while trying to work on my terminal I got it stuck in continuous graphics testing mode. I think this terminal is VERY underappreciated. Ambervt100 (talk) 20:56, 29 February 2024 (UTC)