This isn’t really true. The old terminal monitors are essentially dumb CRTs and the the museum pieces are just displaying the output from a regular PC running the modern app converted to an appropriate signal + BNC connectors so you see something and not just a black screen.
replyThe old terminal hardware communicated over dedicated serial lines and worked in conjunction with many other “server-side” pieces of software that no longer exist, so it would be impossible to make one function as it did back in the day.
I would love to learn the specs of the original 1983 terminal. By the look of it, it's NTSC timings, so 200-ish lines, but it shows text and graphics, so it must have some bitmap capability. If I were to replicate the look, I'd use something that can display ReGIS or NAPLPS.
replyThey ran iRMX on an 8080 variant and had graphics card that handled the A/V aspects. I suspected the displays could have actually been PAL because it had slightly higher resolution, but I haven’t been able to confirm that yet. I have one of those “Smithsonian” pieces on my desk waiting for me to have to some free time to try to repair the CRTs when I someday have more free time than I do now (any good resources for that??).
replyIn these days I’d as my friend Claude.
reply> VT100
replyHaven't seen that term in so many years/decades. Thanks for the flashback.