DEC VTxxx terminals, where did they go?

[atod]

I sold mine during a move for $71 plus shipping and it was working perfectly. Now I miss that thing and realized what a workhorse of a terminal it was!

There used to be a great deal of these around the Northeast where DEC was located. I wonder where all the terminals have gone?

 

[NeXT]

The move to Telnet and later SSH rendered serial terminals for the most part obsolete as one commodity desktop/thin client could replace multiple terminals, or just replacing the host machine with a modern server or desktop completely. Most likely ended up being palletized and recycled over the last 15 years.

 

[stephenbuck]

Me too! I've been looking for VT100s (or even just keyboards), working or not, for a university museum exhibit for some time and have had no luck! There had to have been many thousands of them out there.

 

[Chuck(G)]

It's worthwhile mentioning that the third-party terminal vendors got in on the action too. We used C. Itoh terminals with our VAX--cheaper, and in some respects, better. Televideo and Wyse made a big inroad with their economy terminals also. When the PC came into wide use, you had something that could replace a terminal and offer a bunch of capabilities not available on a simple terminal. That business of adding some storage (e.g. floppy drive) made a big difference. Quite a few terminal vendors understood this and were able to extend their product line without extensive re-engineering.

 

[g4ugm]

I think they were mostly skipped or trashed. There were thousands and they were worthless. A few went to radio hams for use on Packet Radio. In the UK you used to be able to pick them up at Ham Fests but often the owner wanted a silly price....