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LGR - DEC VT320 Terminal from 1987 (Patreon)

Published:
2019-06-04 21:54:11
Edited:
2019-06-07 01:15:28
Imported:
2021-03

Content

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuZUPpmXfT0

Got a rather special little video for you! I mean, it's nothing terribly dense or mind-blowing I guess, but it's special to me personally anyway.

This is a Digital Equipment Corporation VT320-C2 computer terminal from the late 80s. Amber monochrome screen, 16K of RAM, Intel 8031 microcontroller, and total reliance on outside systems to do much of anything whatsoever. Just the way I like it. You may recall my mentioning some related stuff very briefly in the  DECtalk  Oddware video, but yeah. It's the same kind of machine that I used  back in the day to access the computerized card catalog at my local libraries. I've been intrigued by them ever since!

While I've talked about BBSs and connecting to them using the Wifi232 before on LGR, doing so on this terminal takes it another level in my eyes. It's an oddly inspiring machine and I found myself wanting to switch up the video's visuals a bit as a result. Amber backlighting was a given, but I also put together a new wood paneling surface to film on top of and found a nifty-looking glass lamp that I placed in a few shots. Also experimenting some more with the Lumix GH5S that I picked up recently, which performs fantastically reducing moire patterns on CRTs. I dunno, constantly experimenting as always, but I like the way this turned out.

After this I'm really not sure when the next LGR video will be done. I'm headed on out to Los Angeles for E3 here in a couple days so that doesn't leave much time to get another video done. I'm going to the show to work on a couple of future projects, there's no telling when I'll get those finished since they're rather different kinds of things than I normally do. However, if I have time I may post some stuff about E3 here on Patreon during the coming week, so stay tuned :)

Files

DEC VT320: The Classic 1987 Library Computer Terminal

Comments

Anonymous

Amber monochrome screens fill me up with so much nostalgia. Reminds me of all those nights staring at my first PC's monitor, playing Police Quest... Seriously, it took me hours to spot where my character was on that screen...

Anonymous

The start of this video is actually beautiful. Wow

Anonymous

yer its in 360p at mo going to wait for hd as this will be a good one :)

LazyGameReviews
>>23406733

Hehe, yeah adventure games on amber monochrome has a certainly delight to them. One of my earliest gaming memories is seeing Faery Tale Adventure on just such a screen.

LazyGameReviews
>>23406777

Good ol' YouTube taking forever on 4K uploads as usual. Showing full res on my end now, hope it's worth the wait!

Anonymous

God, I love this shit.

Anonymous

Nice! Those colors alone are just great and it has that lovely quality scrolling. I want a keyboard with a "Do" key. Just "Do". That intro... That intro dude. That's some great cinematography.

Anonymous

Ahhhh... beautiful! The patterns when starting it up, the smooth scrolling. Inspiring stuff.

LazyGameReviews
>>23407387

Thanks man, I'm pretty proud of how that turned out too. One of those late night ideas that actually worked how I saw it in my head!

Anonymous

Farts and Balls? Lol.

Anonymous

I'm in awe of how genuinely *good* this looks. And the writing/flow was excellent, too! May your video quality increase ever further. I'm excited to see your progress ^^

Anonymous

Holy guacamole that sweet scrooling... It almost looked like it was added in post with cgi or something....

Anonymous

That console font is perfect and my eyes had a hard time believing the scrolling wasn't composited on in the video. Definitely needs to be watched in 60fps. Looks like I'm off to eBay to start watching for one these.

Anonymous

Oh my god. These bring back memories. Though I think my library had WYSE not DEC terminals. My high school had ~IBM~ 3270 terminals. Those were cool.

Anonymous

I had to support those back in 2005/2006 when I was IT for a newsprint co. I don't remember much about them other than they were a pain to diagnose...cool that you found some entertainment/use in them, I would have never thought! As always, fantastic and soothing video to enjoy! thank you

Library of Context

This brings back memories. When I went to college they had a row of these VT terminals ( not this exact model, I think they were VT100 or VT110's) in the basement - and they were almost new then - remoting into the VAX server across campus to run Fortran programs. This was 1989. My second co-op job was doing finite element modeling on a VT connected to a DEC server.

LazyGameReviews
>>23408729

Always wanted to give one of those beasts a try! IBM made some neat-looking terminals, and the build quality alone is desirable.

Anonymous

I did find this terminally enjoyable. (Ha!) I wonder how hard it would be to get the same card catalog software and enter in all of your games to make your own card catalog. Probably too much work, I'm sure.

Anonymous

Not sure if this was the exact model, but this brought back intense memories of doing FORTRAN homework on my university's VAX, circa 1992. My public library definitely used something similar for the card catalog (thought I'm old enough to remember old-school, paper-based card catalogs too). Good times.

Anonymous

Just superb. I recently started using an amber theme for my code editor, but it's a far cry from this buttery smoothness.

Anonymous

I'm famous, my name appeared in an LGR video on the BBS :P If I remember right the libraries around me used IBM terminals of some kind, with a green phosphor. They had those till sometime in the mid to late 2000s. The smooth scrolling is really a neat effect though. It'd be neat to see that on modern software terminals. Though I guess it only really works that nicely at lower baud rates.

Kris Asick

That is some sliky smooth scrolling... Wonder what it's doing internally to pull that off? :o

Brad Sparks

When I was in college a friend had one of these that he crammed in a Micro HDD from an iPod, a much more bashed together serial adapter, and a micro PC, he dialed into itself over serial essentially. Ran what must have been FreeDOS, and had Wifi. Would cart it into coffee shops and have a blast.

Anonymous

I love how the hard drive seek noises were in rhythm with the intro music - I went back and listened to that like 5 times.

Anonymous

I wonder if that stand cost $999.

Anonymous

dunno if this shows up in your analytics, but I'm the guy who watched that intro a dozen times over. beautiful!

Anonymous

The intro to the video was extremely beautiful. Wonderful work!! What song was that?

BastetFurry

Hmm, i could set up something along those lines for some retro BBS action, even if it has a bit more horsepower in the end. I have an amber monitor from Commodore, i think Phillips is the OEM of these, and an old RasPi1 collecting dust that could easily be booted without X just to a terminal.

Anonymous

<i>[/see's jaw-droppingly pretty intro</i>] Never has a Youtuber been so inappropriately username'd... :p

Anonymous

It's so pretty. So much more pleasing on the eye than the Wyse green screen terminal I had to endure back in the day. With screen burn already taking hold only a year into its life.

Dave Taylor

Thanks as always, looking forward to watching this when I get home from work! I always find your videos curiously soothing... Cool to see you changing up the presentation a bit, looking forward to what you do next 👍

Anonymous

Great intro, I love it. Amber displays are so pleasant to watch. Could have been a presentation from a tech company which is using a fruit symbol in their logo. ;-) Have you ever tried to do a telnet to towel.blinkenlights.nl ?

LazyGameReviews
>>23435527

It's been probably eighteen years but yes. Pretty much the only thing I used the command console for on Windows XP!

Anonymous

In my early days as a Solaris SA in the mid 90s, we didn't have a remote way of connecting to servers' consoles, so we had VT320s on top of every server, sometimes 5ft up, which was a pain. The video threw me straight back. I even felt cold :). That beeping keyboard meant that there was something wrong with the connection to the server though, hopefully a cable but could mean hacking around with parity and stop bit settings, which would quickly melt your brain. Doesn't instil quite the pleasure in me that it does you.

Anonymous

Man LORD / TW2002 / Telarena.. Memories!

Anonymous
>>23427277

But the Wyse 60 has a lovely regular old serial port! I had those hooked up to a *nix box back in the day with a weird super-multi-serial port controller deal. (Dad sold these kinds of systems to warehouses and such)

Anonymous

Watched it twice! Thanks Clint, enjoy your travels

Anonymous

Oh so that's what you do with a terminal these days. Cool! I might have to try a terminal emulator this weekend

Anonymous

It makes me sad that nobody seems to be in the business of preserving non-game server software like the old Dynix library systems. There are antique dealers I could get a card catalog from, and a skilled cabinet-maker could even make me a new one, but if I wanted to replicate the library experience of the late-eighties, I'm not sure that it could be done.

Doeke Zanstra

Nice! I started with green, but amber was always my favorite. So this is a thing that could be /dev/tty1 or so on my Mac? Is it as easy as using a usb2serial converter, or is there more to it?