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VT05

 

 
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VT05
 
 
"VT-05" can also refer to .
The VT05 was the first free-standing CRT
Cathode ray tube

The cathode ray tube is a vacuum tube containing an electron gun and a fluorescent screen, with internal or external means to accelerate and deflect the electron beam, used to create images in the form of light emitted from the fluorescent screen....
 computer terminal
Computer terminal

A computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical computer hardware device that is used for entering data into, and displaying data from, a computer or a computing system....
 from Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation

Digital Equipment Corporation was a pioneering United States company in the computer industry. It is often referred to within the computing industry as DEC ....
. Famous for its extremely futuristic styling, the VT05 presented the user with an upper-case only 5x7 dot-matrix display of 20 rows by 72 columns. The terminal only supported forward scrolling and direct cursor addressing; no fancier editing functions were supported. No special character renditions (such as blinking, bolding, underlining, or reverse video) were supported. The VT05 supported asynchronous communication
Asynchronous communication

In telecommunications, Asynchronous communication is transmission of data without the use of an external clock signal. Any timing required to recover data from the communication symbols is encoded within the symbols....
 at baud rates up to 2400 bits per second (although fill characters were required above 300 bits per second).

Internally, the VT05 was implemented using four "quad-sized" DEC modules in a standard form-factor DEC backplane. The cards were mounted nearly-horizontally over an off-the-shelf CRT monitor. The keyboard used advanced capacitive sensors, but this proved to be unreliable and later keyboards used a simple four-contact mechanical switch.

The VT05's dynamic storage was a PMOS shift register
Shift register

In digital circuits, a shift register is a group of flip-flop s set up in a linear fashion which have their inputs and outputs connected together in such a way that the data is shifted down the line when the circuit is activated....
; the delays associated with manipulating the data in the shift register resulted in the VT05 requiring fill character
Fill character

In computer terminology, a fill character is a Character transmitted solely for the purpose of consuming time. It does this by filling a timeslot on a data transmission line which would otherwise be forced to be idle ....
s after each line feed (as compared to contemporaneous hard copy
Hard copy

In information handling, a hard copy is a permanent reproduction, or copy in the form of a physical object, of any media suitable for direct use by a person , of displayed or transmitted data....
 terminals which required fill characters after each carriage return
Carriage return

Originally, carriage return was the term for the control character in Baudot code on a Teleprinter for end of line return to beginning of line and did not include line feed....
).

The VT05 also had the capability of acting as a black-and-white RS-170-standard video monitor for videotape recorders, camera
Video camera

File:Sonyhdrfx1.jpgA video camera is a camera used for electronic motion picture acquisition, initially developed by the television industry but now common in other applications as well....
s, and other sources. The VT05 was equipped with a video input, and could superimpose its text over the displayed video, making it suitable for interactive video systems.

The VT05 was eventually superseded by the VT50 which itself was quickly superseded by the VT52
VT52

The VT52 was a cathode ray tube-based computer terminal produced by Digital Equipment Corporation during the late 1970s. It provided a screen of 24 rows and 80 columns of text and supported all 95 ASCII characters as well as 32 graphics characters....
.

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