NeXT
Veteran Member
I first saw this thing at my university. I haggled the IT desk and the folks over at the warehouse about it. In the past they would of just given it away (which is how I got a bunch of my other stuff) but now they had to follow e-waste regulations. For this however I pleaded and it went up on BCauction. Up until the $65 mark I was in a bidding war against some schmuck who by looking at their purchase history was a reseller.
Go get bent. This terminal needed a real home.
Anyways after taxes it cost me $70. I picked it up from the loading dock before my university classes started and immediately got to work on it when I got home.
I was asked by two separate people at different stop lights "what are you doing with the DEC terminal?"
Originally when I saw the unit and plugged it in the front panel was giving me constantly changing and nonsensical front panel indications. The unit could also not be put in local mode and the lubricant on the carriage had gummed up tot he point it was pretty much jammed. The ribbon at least looked salvageable. Now that it was back at the house I had the chance to tear it down and give it a VERY badly needed dusting.
A better look at the main logic board.
The carriage freed up with a bit of WD40.
Now that I had completely cleaned the thing I looked at the scary linear power supply. I suspected that the caps needed reforming but my only variac is rated for up to 1A only. Chinesium....
Admitting defeat on the power supply for now I reassembled the whole system and plugged it in. This time the front panel was completely lit.
Odd. I wonder what changed. I started poking about to see if I could mess with it more. Eventually I found that if you tripped the paper switch and had the lid switch pressed the terminal would work! Awesome!
Okay, so now the thing completely works. The ribbon still fades in and out but I've seen several way to reink them. I might try it after another full windthrough. For now I need to finish my other project.
On the left side there is a knockout for some other option. DEC puts a cheat sheet for the setup options here but I'll peel that off and hide it somewhere else. My final goal is to install a paper tape reader.
It's a serial device so I'll just tap it into the serial port on the underside of the terminal. Flipping a switch enables or disables it. In the far future I might add another switch and a motor so that it will feed the tape through on its own. The key component there is I find a small enough DC motor. The whole point for the reader is that unless I ever owned one I would no longer need an ASR33 unless for some reason I needed to punch a tape.
Also, what the hell was with the numpads always losing their keycaps. Now I have a VT100 and this with missing caps on the numpad.
Go get bent. This terminal needed a real home.
Anyways after taxes it cost me $70. I picked it up from the loading dock before my university classes started and immediately got to work on it when I got home.
I was asked by two separate people at different stop lights "what are you doing with the DEC terminal?"
Originally when I saw the unit and plugged it in the front panel was giving me constantly changing and nonsensical front panel indications. The unit could also not be put in local mode and the lubricant on the carriage had gummed up tot he point it was pretty much jammed. The ribbon at least looked salvageable. Now that it was back at the house I had the chance to tear it down and give it a VERY badly needed dusting.
A better look at the main logic board.
The carriage freed up with a bit of WD40.
Now that I had completely cleaned the thing I looked at the scary linear power supply. I suspected that the caps needed reforming but my only variac is rated for up to 1A only. Chinesium....
Admitting defeat on the power supply for now I reassembled the whole system and plugged it in. This time the front panel was completely lit.
Odd. I wonder what changed. I started poking about to see if I could mess with it more. Eventually I found that if you tripped the paper switch and had the lid switch pressed the terminal would work! Awesome!
Okay, so now the thing completely works. The ribbon still fades in and out but I've seen several way to reink them. I might try it after another full windthrough. For now I need to finish my other project.
On the left side there is a knockout for some other option. DEC puts a cheat sheet for the setup options here but I'll peel that off and hide it somewhere else. My final goal is to install a paper tape reader.
It's a serial device so I'll just tap it into the serial port on the underside of the terminal. Flipping a switch enables or disables it. In the far future I might add another switch and a motor so that it will feed the tape through on its own. The key component there is I find a small enough DC motor. The whole point for the reader is that unless I ever owned one I would no longer need an ASR33 unless for some reason I needed to punch a tape.
Also, what the hell was with the numpads always losing their keycaps. Now I have a VT100 and this with missing caps on the numpad.
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