While I'd love a VT100 I probably be better off with fixing my truck first. The last VT100 I saw on fleabay in 100% working condition went for nearly $4000. Out of my price range. So I'm working on a project to build an ASCII terminal based on Geoff Grahams PIC based terminal.
The idea is to design a PC board for it to make it easy to mount to the back of a cheap and cheerful LCD VGA monitor. It will get it's power from the monitor and use a PS2 keyboard to hopefully end up with a useable standalone terminal for use with my Altair 8800c and other retro style projects.
If anyone is interested I can document the project here.
This project is progressing well.
The green board is version 1 and the red board version 2. There will be a version3 at some point.
The changes from version 1 to version 2 are as follows. On the first try I had the com port set up as DCE. However, my 8800C is also set up as DCE so I went with DTE on version2 so I could connect up with a simple strait-through cable. Also I buggered up the VGA and to some extent the PS/2 keyboard connector patterns in the first version so for version 2 I improved all the connector patterns. I also changed from a barrel power connector to a .1” Molex, spiffed up the silk screen a bit, added mounting holes and dropped the copper pours.
Here is V1 built up. Note the screwdriver pointing to an LED. I used a red LED to drop the 5V input to 3.6V for the PIC chip as I didn’t have any 3.3V regulators knocking around.
Here is my V2 build. Since this is not the final design I just wired it for green color rather than use a dip switch. This time I had 3.3V regulators.
For V3 I’m going to drop the composite video out and reduce the size of the board a bit. I’m also going to experiment around with using a USB keyboard as they are easier to find than the PS/2 units.
See below for more ...