#tektronix

It really wasn't doing a whole lot, it bleeped, PAGE cleared the screen, and not much else So I consulted the service manual, I initially looked at the keyboard, in theory in LOCAL mode or with TX/RX connected we should hear a bell similar to the one we hear at startup when CTRL + G is pressed, but alas nothing, checking the serial line on a scope, and sure enough, nothing! My first point of call was the keyboard, whilst PAGE was doing something, this existed outside of the keyboard matrix and was a switch which connected straight to the minibus backplane which contained all the control electronics Oh yeah - this machine is build before the advent of microprocessors, it's combinational logic boards on a passive backplane all the way down! A similar construction to contemporary minicomputers! After spending hours looking at the keyboard to understand it, I was rather blown away, this keyboard uses a 7 bit counter (using a 4 bit counter IC with some flip flops to extend it), feeding the lower 4 bits into a 4-16 line decoder which pulsed each row, and the upper 3 bits into an 8-to-1 multiplexer which scanned each column, when a key is pressed and the decoder pulses the row whilst the multiplexer reads the row, the output of the multiplexer goes low, stopping the clock going into counter, and the 7 bit number on that counter - it's the ASCII value of the key you pressed! #tektronix #tektronix4010 #vectorgraphics #terminal #vintagecomputing

Soo been a while since I posted; you may have seen I mentioned I have a new adventure Welll... I've been working on a recently acquired Tektronix 4010 vector terminal at @nottinghack@hachyderm.io This is the first machine which launched the iconic 4010 series vector graphics terminals which relied on the unique storage tube technology to display vector graphics without having to constantly rescan the image If this sounds confusing, here's a really good video from EMF 2024 by @stepleton@oldbytes.space describing the operation better than I could ever do https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ind_2eMzsbM This is where I have gotten so far... #tektronix #tektronix4010 #vectorgraphics #terminal #vintagecomputing

@nottinghack@hachyderm.io The story began on Friday 24th July 2026, when I see this holy grail of computing history on eBay for a price I can afford; and ensuring I am not dreaming, I buy it Cut to the very next day, I roll into Nottingham hackspace on my Sinclair C5 after doing half a day at Nottingham pride to meet with the seller who insisted they drive 2 hours to hand deliver it to me This turned out to be nearly perfect, as @philpem@digipres.club (who I cannot thank ENOUGH) happened to be down, and I discovered on that day they happen to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of Tektronix equipment and documentation to the point where they instantly told me where it was made as soon as I had removed the front cover and showed the Sharpied on serial number The original owner reported that they turned it on once, saw the whole screen light up and immediately turned it off, given that these CRTs are very rare and very bespoke, that is an understandable reaction, however based off of advice from Tom Stepleton (from the very good video above) and the user manual (which the previous owner had) showed this is normal, and you simply need to press PAGE to clear the screen. Getting the front panel off showed a more pressing problem though, a fuse had blown! #tektronix #tektronix4010 #vectorgraphics #terminal #vintagecomputing

Anybody local or willing to be local for pickup and retrocomputery got an interest in an antique Tektronix monitor? It's not multisync in the traditional sense, it's _adjustable_ sync, and you can tune it into a variety of resolutions from the outside using a special plastic tool to adjust internal pots. (My household near UW used it as a gaming monitor circa 2000 or so) (I think it came from Boeing Surplus but don't quote me on that. iirc we mostly ran it at 1024x768.) #retrocomputing #CRT #Tektronix