Re: DEC Terminal Memories
I worked two summers at DEC Westfield. I was a summer replacement tech on the RK06 production line.
Westfield was also building LA36 DECwriters and VT78? terminals.
I mentioned to one of the lead tech's that I was looking for a terminal. He said there was a salvage sale coming up and to be there. When I got there, there was a complete parts kit for a VT05. I spent the next semester in the EE lab at school fixing it (I had all the schematics, natch). What I remember most, was the quad module backplane had been built with no connection between the top and bottom layers of the backplane. So I had some *very* thin solder, and I'd heat up the pins, one by one, and slip the solder between the connector pins until it flowed onto the pin I was heating, thence to the inaccessible etch on the backplane itself!
That terminal served me well and ended up in some lab at MIT when I put it up for sale. I ended up getting a job at Data General, because DEC wasn't hiring when I got out of school, but I still have my DEC badge (#47349) and a PiDP-8/I emulator running down here in the basement office.