VT05

Article summary

:"VT-05" can also refer to . The VT05 is the first free-standing CRT computer terminal from Digital Equipment Corporation introduced in 1970. Famous for its futuristic styling, the VT05 presents the user with an upper-case-only ASCII character display of 72 columns by 20 rows. The VT05 was a smart terminal that provides cursor addressing using a series of control characters, one of which allows the cursor to be positioned at an absolute location on the screen. This basic system provided the basis of similar systems in the later and greatly improved VT50 and VT52 series. The terminal only supports forward scrolling and direct cursor addressing; no fancier editing functions are supported. No special character renditions (such as blinking, bolding, underlining, or reverse video) are supported. The VT05 supports asynchronous communication at baud rates up to 2400 bits per second (although fill characters are required above 300 bits per second). Internally, the VT05 implements four "quad-sized" DEC modules in a standard form-factor DEC backplane. The cards are mounted nearly horizontally over an off-the-shelf CRT monitor. The terminal is 19" wide and 30" deep (much deeper than a typical desk). The keyboard used advanced capacitive sensors, but this proved to be unreliable and later keyboards use a simple four-contact mechanical switch.…

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