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This VT105 Terminal is from the collection of the Computer-Cabinett-Göttingen. I first thought it was an ordinary VT100, but then I found this:
> DEC made a thing called a VT105, which is a VT100 with a 'waveform
> generator' board in it. This was a 'graphics' terminal, but you could
> only display 2 points in each vertical column (or all points _below_ one
> of those points). It was thus ideal for drawing graphs or barcharts but
> not a lot of use for drawing anything else.
>
> There were 3rd party graphics cards as well. One that I remember was
> called a 'retrographics'. They normally emulated a Tektronix 4000 series
> terminal on the (raster-scan) VT100 display.
>
> As to whether linux can drive them, well, both of the above were
> controlled by control sequences sent over the RS232 port, which
> obviously linux can do. As to whether gnuplot can do it, well, I would
> think it could drive a Tekky 4000 (since most things can...), but I doubt
> if it can do the VT105.
(Comment by Tony Duell in the www.classiccmp.org mailing list database.)
The VT105 belongs to a MINC, an analog data acquisition computer based on a PDP 11/23 which we also have in our collection, but didn't get to yet. You may look at Olaf Püschel's description of his MINC-11.
I was disappointed not to find any software to try the graph drawing mode, so I wrote the missing Gnuplot 3.7.1 driver. There are DECUS archives of the original MINC Fortran IV code, but I decided it was easier to try the terminal this way.
Paul Williams (see below) took the time to scan the VT55 Users' Manual which details the escape codes for the graph drawing mode. The graph drawing field is a 512x236 matrix which is displayed over the normal text mode. The first column and the bottom line of the text screen are outside the graph region for labeling purposes.
These are the supported graph elements:
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, Paul Williams' great
resource where also the programming information came from.
Introduced in September 1975. This terminal
was controlled by a proprietary set of escape codes, before ANSI X3.64 standardised them.
The VT52 was the last terminal on which you could balance all your computer manuals, sandwiches and coffee; all later
terminals had sloped tops to discourage people from blocking vents. There was an optional electrolytic ("wet") copier which fitted inside
the case, and an optional printer board.
The VT50 was an uppercase-only subset of the VT52 with only 12 lines.
The VT55 has a primitive graphics capability, somewhat misleadingly referred to as "waveform graphics". It allows the drawing
of primitive line or bar graphs. The VT62 has inverse video mode.
Digital's first ANSI-compliant terminal, introduced in August 1978. The VT100 was more of an architecture than a simple terminal. There are two display formats: 80 columns by 24 lines and 132 columns by 14 lines. A separate advanced video option was required to display 24 lines in 132-column mode; this was standard on the VT102 and VT131.
The VT103 is not really a terminal; it is a computer with an LSI-11/23 in a VT100 box.