VT100

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VT100

VT100 is a video 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....
which was made by 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 ....
(DEC). It became the de facto

De facto

De facto is a Latin expression that means "concerning the fact" or in practice but not necessarily ordained by law. It is commonly used in contrast to de jure when referring to matters of law, governance, or technique that are found in the common experience as created or developed without or contrary to a regulation....
standard used by terminal emulator

Terminal emulator

A terminal emulator, terminal application, term, or tty for short, is a program that emulates a "dumb" video Computer terminal within some other display architecture....
s.

It was introduced in August 1978, following its predecessor, 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....
, and communicated with its host

Server (computing)

A server is a computer program that provides services to other computer programs , in the same or other computer. The physical computer that runs a server program is also often referred to as server....
system over serial lines using the ASCII

ASCII

American Standard Code for Information Interchange , is a coding standard that can be used for interchanging information, if the information is expressed mainly by the written form of English words....
character set and control sequences (a.k.a. escape sequence

Escape sequence

An escape sequence is a series of character used to change the state of computers and their attached peripheral devices. These are also known as control sequences, reflecting their use in device control....
s) standardized by ANSI

American National Standards Institute

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Encyclopedia

VT100 is a video terminal

Computer terminal

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 ....
(DEC). It became the de facto

De facto

Terminal emulator

VT52

Server (computing)

ASCII

Escape sequence

American National Standards Institute

The American National Standards Institute or ANSI is a private non-profit organization that oversees the development of voluntary consensus standards for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel in the United States....
. The VT100 was also the first Digital mass-market terminal to incorporate "graphic renditions" (blinking, bolding, reverse video, and underlining) as well as a selectable 80 or 132 column display. All setup of the VT100 was accomplished using interactive displays presented on the screen; the setup data was stored in non-volatile memory within the terminal. The VT100 also introduced an additional character set that allowed the drawing of on-screen forms.

The control sequences used by the VT100 family are based on the ANSI X3.64 standard, later ECMA

Ecma International

'Ecma International' is an international, private non-profit standards organization for information and communication systems. It acquired its name in 1994, when the European Computer Manufacturers Association changed its name to reflect the organization's international reach....
-48 and ISO

International Organization for Standardization

The International Organization for Standardization , widely known as ISO , is an international standard-setting body composed of representatives from various national standards organizations....
/IEC

International Electrotechnical Commission

The International Electrotechnical Commission is a Non-profit organization, non-governmental international standards organization that prepares and publishes International Standards for all electrical, electronic and related technologies ? collectively known as "electrotechnology"....
6429. These are sometimes referred to as ANSI escape code

ANSI escape code

ANSI escape sequences are used to control text formatting and other output options on text terminals. In this context, American National Standards Institute refers to the ANSI X3.64 standard ....
s. The VT100 was not the first terminal to be based on X3.64—The Heath Company had a microprocessor-based video terminal that implemented a subset of the standard proposed by ANSI in X3.64 .

The VT100 was also the first of Digital's terminals to be based upon an industry-standard microprocessor (in this case, the Intel 8080

Intel 8080

The Intel 8080 was an early microprocessor designed and manufactured by Intel. The 8-bit microprocessor was released in April 1974 running at 2 megahertz , and is generally considered to be the first truly usable microprocessor....
). Options could be added to the terminal to support an external printer and additional graphic renditions and memory (the "AVO" 'Advanced' Video Option — without this option, the VT100 could not display a full 24 lines of text when in 132 column mode). The VT101 and VT102 were cost-reduced non-expandable follow-on products, with the VT102 including the AVO and serial printer port options of the VT100. The VT100 became a platform on which Digital constructed related products. The VT105 contained a simple graphics subsystem mostly-compatible with the earlier VT55. The VT125 added an implementation of the byte-efficient Remote Graphic Instruction Set (ReGIS.) The VT103 added a built-in LSI-11 processor while the VT278 added a built-in PDP-8

PDP-8

The PDP-8 was the first successful commercial minicomputer, produced by Digital Equipment Corporation in the 1960s. DEC introduced it on 22 March 1965, and sold more than 50,000 systems, the most of any computer up to that date....
processor, allowing the terminal to run Digital's WPS-8

WPS-8

WPS-8 was the name of a Word processing sold by Digital Equipment Corporation for use with their PDP-8 processors .WPS-8 supported a variety of 24 row by 80 or 132 column terminals including the VT52 family as well as the VT100 family and all subsequent ANSI-compatible terminals....
word processing software. The VT180

VT180

The VT180 was a Computer terminal produced by Digital Equipment Corporation of Maynard, Massachusetts, Massachusetts.An extension of their existing line of VT100 terminals, this version integrated a Zilog Z80 microprocessor and two external 5.25-inch floppy disk drives....
(codenamed "Robin") added a single-board microcomputer using a Zilog Z80

Zilog Z80

The Zilog Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor designed and sold by Zilog from July 1976 onwards. It was widely used both in desktop and embedded computer designs as well as for military purposes....
to run CP/M

CP/M

CP/M is an operating system originally created for Intel 8080/Intel 8085 based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research. Initially confined to single tasking on 8-bit processors and no more than 64 kilobytes of memory, later versions of CP/M added multi-user variations, and were migrated to 16-bit processors....
.

In 1983, the VT100 was replaced by the more-powerful VT200 series terminals such as the VT220

VT220

The VT220 was a computer terminal produced by Digital Equipment Corporation from 1983 to 1987....
.

In August 1995 the terminal business of Digital was sold to Boundless Technologies.

VT100

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