Sold as is, not working, no returns, no refunds. to USA is flat rate $195.50, but if you are in California,please send me a message BEFORE you buy and I will reduce the shippingto $139.25 for you.Free local pickup in the Los Feliz district of L.A. is okay if you canwork around my busy is an as-is Digital Engineering Retro-Graphics VT640 enhanced DECVT100 terminal with keyboard. It doesn't power up. I can try it, but itdoesn't do anything.I know the properly running humming sound and slightly warm electrictoast smell these fill the room with after running for a while (and upclose after running even a few minutes), which I assume is probably thedust cooking on hot components, as the whole top of these are slots andthat dust goes to all the power, video, and logic boards. It doesn'tsmoke the flyback transformer/wiring in the AC power section on top oranything---so far---because there appears to be no power getting intoit. These have sort of a "whoomm" sound when coming on and a littlehum/presence sound when they are on and this one has none.It does have the keyboard included here with built-in cord that'sbasically in better shape than any of the stored-outdoors missing 5-10keys trash I've seen on in from the chassis, special graphics CRT (and the AC/DC powersupply setup that is obviously bad), this sale includes thefollowing seven (7) items:1) Digital Equipment Corporation VT100 Terminal Controller Board (akaVT100 BASIC VIDEO), serial number AB33209XG9. This is the board thathas the DB-25 comm connector, BNC connectors, and the 1/4" phone jack.This board IS the VT100. This is probably the latest revision, made inthe second half of 1983 (chips dated 8321 and 8329), and the layout isquite different (plated through hole pads on the holes on the edges ofthe board, etc.) than the last one I sold here on . 2) Digital Engineering, Inc. VT100 Interface Board. This is thedaughterboard that has the 40-pin connector and is fitted on top of theVT100 Terminal Controller Board. This is the latest revision, made inthe second half of 1984, and the layout is quite different (has bypasscaps and a transistor that the older board didn't) than the last one Isold here on . 3) 18-pin jumper cable that connects the VT100 Interface Board to theVT100 Terminal Controller Board.4) Digital Engineering, Inc. VT640 Retro-Graphics Terminal EnhancementMain Logic Board, serial number 13777 with version 015151 and 015152firmware. This is the board that has the 40-pin connector, Z-80 CPU,Z-80 peripheral chips, Retro-Graphics software EPROMs, and lots ofvideo RAM. This board IS the VT640. This is the latest revision, madein the second half of 1984, and the layout is quite different than thelast one I sold here on . 5) 40-pin jumper cable that connects the Digital Engineering, Inc.VT640 Retro-Graphics Terminal Enhancement Main Logic Board to the VT100Terminal Controller Board.6) Digital Engineering, Inc. VT640 Retro-Graphics Motherboard. This iswhat the above cards plug into. I've provided a reference photo of thebottom/back side of another one just so you can see it's not a standardTaiwan-made DEC very, very common part, it's special to the VT640. Theactual photos show the top side coming through into the card cage area.7) Digital Engineering, Inc.VT640 Retro-Graphics Motherboard cable.This is the edge card connector cable that connects the DigitalEngineering, Inc. VT640 Retro-Graphics Motherboard to the power background on this exact item marked with the DEC model ofVT100-AA and serial number ABX9150:The special Digital Engineering Retro-Graphics VT640 enhanced boardset/green screen graphics CRT/etc. was made in the second half of 1984.This Digital Engineering Retro-Graphics VT640 enhancement came out in1980, so this makes it the latest revision of all parts and this is oneof the very, very last ones made. I don't recall having one of these ofsuch a late revision out of the 15-20 VT640s I've had for my businessand professional use, and nearly all I've seen were made in 1981 (theintegrater didn't offer it until the Terminal Support Package of 1981was announced, and the whole terminal was $4,500 from the integrator)and 1982 and put on terminals made back to 1980 (often themanufacturing date on the terminal is one year before the VT640 partswere made, then installed after that).The DEC model VT100 has relatively little value as they are commonlyavailable, though almost NEVER as clean as this one, just look at thephotos, it is absolutely stunning, and it is made in the second half of1983, marked SEPTEMBER 1983. The Digital Engineering Retro-GraphicsVT640 upgrade kit came out in 1980 to do incredibly high end CAD work,etc., a year before the IBM PC 5150 even existed. It was supplied by the system integrator in New England for $4,500 inlate 1984 with a high end digital synthesizer/music computerworkstation. It was the high end terminal option at that time, but theonly practical one considering the audio waveform/harmonics graphicsthat had to be displayed. The other two listed options at that timewere the Lear-Siegler ADM-3A and the DECwriter hardcopy at 1/4th and1/3rd the price, which could only display the text from someapplications, and no graphics at all. The Digital Engineering Retro-Graphics VT640 enhanced board set/greenscreen graphics CRT/etc. was sold as a kit (not expensive, I think itmay have been under $2,000 in 1980, but a lot of dangerous work toinstall), but this one is not a user conversion. Those were often seenfrom colleges who had a VT100 already, and bought the kit and installedit, so the date codes between the VT640 boards and the VT100 boards area few years apart, and on a school-worn VT100 chassis. This isn't oneof those.This particular VT640 was sold and serial number tagged from the systemintegrator in New England as you can see in the photos, so it waseither converted in the system integrator's factory or they justordered them from Digital Engineering already converted, I don't knowwhich way they did it. But it wasn't done by a user or school.This was originally purchased by a major movie composer as part of a$65,000 system purchase, so aside from it sitting in an airtight flightcase in the back of the Synhouse warehouse since it came in 11/9/2005,it is really just a one owner item, used from late 1984 to 1989, thenput in flight cases, and stored 16 years until Synhouse was called tocome and get it.As you can see in the photo gallery, the actual item/actual serialnumber unit here is shown in a 1988 magazine profiling theartist/equipment used, he did The Last Starfighter, which is famous forbeing the movie with the first CGI-generated spaceship.When it came in to Synhouse 19 years ago on 11/9/2005, it hadn't evenbeen plugged in since 1989. It was brought home and tested here and itworked at that time in November 2005. I thought I was going to sell it11/28/2009, as I sold 2 or 3 VT640s that year, so I pulled it out ofthe warehouse, took some clearer photos, and briefly brought it home totest it, and just as in November 2005, all I had to do to make the commwork and the graphics make sense was to enter the correct line terminalsetup configurations as per the manual from the system integrator, soit would send/receive the right number of stop bits, etc. with thecomputer system I was testing it with. I'm not sure how that data isstored, but if the terminal is not used for a few years, it loses thosesettings and they need to be entered again. Anyone trying to use thatparticular system who does NOT have the settings from the manual fromthe integrator will have no chance getting it to display properly, ornot having the correct terminal cable, either (of which I have many,$40 or $50, heavy duty Belden and Amphenol, most are very, very long). But I decided not to sell it then, and left it in the warehouse. Forsome reason I seem to recall bringing it back again around 2011 or morelikely 2012 for another test, but I can't fine photos or notes of that.The reason I was checking again and again every time I thought aboutselling it to raise up some money is because a problem common to theVT640 complicated graphics setup was some problem with the RAM or videoRAM that made some flecks or snow on the screen, so I would check themoften. I wouldn't do that with a 1984 Macintosh or whatever, but onthese very valuable assets, I did check them from time to time. These VT640s usually worked when I used to get them in (mostly late1990s and early 2000s, very, very few since then, I also get in theBritish Pericom Monterey MG600 with the 17" Philips green screen), andif not I remove/reinsert the boards and the socketed ICs on them, andthen they work. I've heard of a dead VT640 board of some sort becauseone was sold on here from a place that I knew understood how to testit, but I've never had a totally dead VT640 board of any kind. But mostof this experience is 20-26 years ago.After all that, this VT640 in the original flight case (not included,but for sale if someone wants it, the blue foam inside is bad andshould be removed, and it's probably about 80 pounds) got worked to thefar back of the warehouse, then a decade later moved about 8 feetforward and left, and since that flight case was on wheels, I used itas the base for a stack. I barely got a glimpse of it 2/2021 when doinga major warehouse move, then wanting to get it out to sell and raisemoney for projects now mid-2024, it took me a week of looking throughthousands of photos and crawling over the stacks twice to figure outwhere it probably was, then it was unbelievably hard work getting itpulled out, and I took photos of that wild chain hoisting work thatonly Synhouse would be able to do.So this item is essentially out of a time capsule from 1989, 35 yearsago, doesn't have 15 minutes of power-on hours in the last 35 years,was tested good in 2005, was tested good in 2009, possibly tested goodagain in 2011-2012 but I'm not sure, then brought home mid-2024 and itwouldn't even power up.
It's not the VT640 boards having the problem with powering up. I havemore experience with those boards than anyone in the world because I'vehad more VT640s and I use them professionally to this day, no one elsedoes. I am keeping the last one in a flight case and may have it goingout on a system rental job soon.So this does not work. It's been sealed in an airtight flight case for35 years, since is being sold primarily for the special Retrographics VT640 partsit has. And while I can reduce the shipping price to sell someone justthe board set, keep in mind, the VT640 is not just "a board". TheRetrographics VT640 upgrade kit included not only all the boards listedabove, but the high resolution CRT (see the photos, it's marked asbeing made in the second half of 1984) as well. The plain Taiwan VT100terminal CRT can't do those graphics with or without "the VT640 board".This is often misunderstood, the VT640 is not just "a board", and theterminal for that music system is not a VT100, which is was a commoncheap Taiwan made office machine used for text. doesn't work. It clearly has a power problem that can be fixed bysomeone comfortable with PSU repair (not me) and the skills and partsto do it, or just fixed by moving all these special parts from DigitalEngineering over to a good working plain VT100.Or maybe better yet the other way round, using the power setup parts orjust new spares on this one because it's so extremely clean all the wayaround. This is FAR cleaner than the untested $900 VT100s I see latelyon . Keep in mind, there is no capacitor in this power supply newer than 41years old, and the life of electrolytic capacitors are assumed to be afew years, and only guaranteed about 90 days. None of these have beenchanged, and I haven't changed them.There are a lot of comments on the web about VT100 repairs, mostly justpeople saying they have one that needs repair but instead of paying tohave it done they make mostly completely idiotic guesses about what'swrong, and report all they are doing, and either the thread goes deador they report back that it still doesn't work. This is because theywere guessing MAJOR components were bad without even testing them.For example, someone posts that they immediately think the transformeris bad. Really? Why? How does a transformer in computing equipment (nodoubt not used for 20-40 years) fail when not even in use? Or how aboutwhen in use? A transformer is just a piece of wire. How would the wirebreak? My cheap-ass Tappan Korean microwave had a giant transformerliterally shooting sparks in 2020............after being used 5-10times a day for 25 years since 1995. It was just plain burned outshunt-shorted together in the windings after all that use over all thattime. I've seen other bad transformers in my career, but only a few,and this is out of TENS OF THOUSANDS of machines using transformers.And FAR more people saying---baselessly---"I think the transformer isbad.". Really? Do you have any stonk picks for me?Another example is when someone posts that they immediately think alarge transistor is bad or "the transistors are bad". Really? Why? Whywould it be bad? I've bought a thousand NOS transistors at a time thatwere 20-40 years old, used them in manufacturing, and never found a badone. I've replaced a lot of transistors in gear that failed during use.But why would a transistor fail when not in use? It could happen, butthis is a mentally stunted assumption when there are76578346534786537845634 other components in there that have, magically,gotten a free pass in this fake imaginary diagnostic done by someonewho couldn't feed themselves for five minutes with their knowledge ofthis gear. There IS a date at which an electrolytic capacitor will have suchreduced capacitance that it essentially has failed, even if it hasn'tblown its top or leaked out on the board. And this is greatly hastenedby high operating temperatures and somewhat by higher ambienttempertures like being outside in the hot sun or in a hot shed or in ahot machine room with 100 machines exhausting their heat to it. This isirrefutable and assumed by the manufacturers of those capacitors.I think most people make too much of this, and also people don'trealize that many circuits will seem to run fine with ALL the capsremoved (power supplies not included). And people who "recap everything" are brain-dead morons who will mostlikely damage traces and make shorts doing 100-200 hand desoldering andhand resoldering jobs on a board that WAS neatly machine wavesolderedby machine to perfection, just ruining the board, and NEVER making adead board work by doing that. Seen it hundreds of times, someone buysdead gear and tells the forum, "first I'm going to recap everything". In my long career, I have no recollection of a single bad ceramic cap(98% of all caps in use and what these chimps are "recapping"), andmost that exist could just be removed and it wouldn't stop the boardfrom working (for example, this revision of the VT100 interface boardshown here has ceramic bypass caps on the ICs, but the 1980-1981version of the same board didn't have any bypass caps, they aredeployed by best practices, not by actual function or necessity), andI've seen tens of thousands of them replaced for no reason.And I have maybe seen a couple of bad film caps fail in criticalpositions in analog synthesizers, but have also replaced a few of thoseto find out no, it was something else causing the problem. I have seen LOTS of shorted, sometimes even catching on fire, dippedtantalum capacitors (odd then that I've never seen a bad/shorted axialtantalum cap, and I use hundreds of them per year in manufacturing),this is well known and to be expected, the parts from the 1980s canfail, but the parts from the 1970s WILL fail and sometimes I've pulled15-20 shorted caps out of one machine that was only 18 years old.In short, electrolytic capacitors are guaranteed to fail, transformersand transistors are not guaranteed to fail, and even most assumptionsabout bad electrolytic capacitors causing problems are reallyoverblown. Some idiot on the forums (Analog Heaven, I think) said thatelectrolytic capacitors don't work because they are all destroyedinitially in the high temperature soldering process. Uhm, then why dothey use them? Amazing that I make a living through manufacturing andthat moron does not, yet still has plenty to say on the forums.On this particular VT640, I looked inside, the power supply is a singleTaiwan-made DEC board from the second half of 1983, very heavy, nosoldermask on either side, and it has no corrosion and no obviouslyburned components. It may have a very complicated problem, or a problemneeding a part that is unavailable (it's an early switcher), or it mayhave an easier fix such as replacing the larger electrolytic capacitorswhich are a part of normal machine service anyway, or the easiest fixmight be just sliding in a good working power supply from a commonworking VT100, but no guarantees, this is sold as-is, not working, noreturns and no refunds.Also, I did some failure analysis work over the years and had anin-shop discussion with people stuggling with it, and in 2023 learned afew things I didn't know related to the electrolytic capacitorproblems. One is that they received huge shipments of caps that werebad from the jump because they had been stored for years in a 100°+warehouse in Burbank, California. For the record, the place this VT640 was in is completely dry and canget well over 100° near the 11 foot ceiling several days a year, dozensof days over 90°, and this was down on the floor 11 feet below which israrely over 75°, and inside an airtight flight case of 3/4"plywood/metal so it was probably at about 65° the whole time.But at 41 years, these electrolyic capacitors can't possibly have thecorrect performance.Please see the photos, the cosmetic appearance of this machine is trulystunning. The upper and lower plastic outer shells are super clean and the glasshas no scratches. And unlike every other VT640 I've ever seen, NONE ofthe peel-and-stick rubber feet are missing from bottom sides of theVT640 or the QWERTY keyboard.The last tested good VT640 I sold was $2,222.00 in 2018.The next one after that was not working due to a smoking high voltagesection I was unable to fix and it had no QWERTY keyboard, it sold for$1,795 2/24/2024. more time to review:It 1) doesn't work and 2) it is sold as-is, not working, no returns,and no will be VERY safely packed for shipment. Those are really delicate (the plastic shell can crack), so I carefullybox and polypropylene strap these.This is a heavy item, valuable and delicate. I will pack it into acardboard carton, polypropylene strap it, then double-box it into asecond outer carton, with solid foam/air packs between the layers, thenstrap that. I just spent EIGHT HOURS EACH packing two professional Sonyvideo decks (this one will probably take four hours) and I don't getpaid for that. So a local pickup would be nice...Shipping to USA is flat rate $195.50, but if you are in California,please send me a message BEFORE you buy and I will reduce the shippingto $139.25 for you.Free local pickup in the Los Feliz district of L.A. is okay if you canwork around my busy background on the VT640, this information is from professionalexperience, and the copyrighted text below is the property of SynhouseMultimedia Corporation and is not to be copied and posted in the listings of sellers who don't know Digital Equipment Corporation DEC VT100 is the most famous computerterminal of all time. The VT640 is the rarest and most sought-afterhigh-end Cadillac version of the VT100.The DEC VT100 terminal could do only text, but it was the standardterminal in the IT industry for 10+ years.A company called Digital Engineering in California created a retrofitpackage to allow the VT100 to do high-resolution green screen graphics.This was available in 1981 before the IBM PC, and was used forspecialty CAD work, architectural design, and other engineering thatrequired the power of computers and a high-resolution graphical display.The retrofit was a huge motherboard and some parts, cables, and a highresolution green screen CRT installed into the standard VT100 terminal,the system integrator in New England sold them 1981-1984 for $4,500.The list price of a Honda Civic in 1980 was $3,999. They might havesold a few more in early 1985, but by then the general computer marketwas pretty lit up with the IBM 5150 so the need for a graphicalcomputer terminal was rapidly expiring.That reminds me, I have a massive collection of IBM 5150 computers thatI'm going to be selling on as soon as I can get to it. I thinkthere are 11 of them sitting in a stack next to me on a dolly here onthe carpet. I bought out the entire computer lab of the engineeringdepartment at a university, and it had these in stock unused for 16years. It's pretty incredible that they still had them in 2002. I don'tthink they had been used since the 80s. Anyway, coming sometime to myitems.These VT640s were rare then, almost unheard of rare now. Dealing withthese is my business and I have owned, stocked, repaired, restored, andsold more VT640s then anyone who ever stepped on the are a lot of misunderstandings about what a VT640 is, and twiceas many misunderstandings about the VT640 among users/fans of thedigital synthesizers (that used the VT640 as the sole graphicsterminal), so I should explain:There is no such thing as a DEC VT640 terminal. A so-called VT640 is aDigital Equipment Corporation VT100 plus a Digital Engineering, Inc.VT640 Retro-Graphics Terminal Enhancement kit.DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) never made anything called a VT640.The industry standard terminal around 1980 was the DEC VT100 which hadno graphics capabilities, it could only do text.A small company called Digital Engineering, Inc. was formed inSacramento California in 1978 to manufacture (and install, as needed)kits that would retrofit graphics capabilities (hence the nameRetro-Graphics) onto the existing text-only terminals such as the DECVT100 and Lear-Siegler ADM-3A. In 1980, they announced the VT640Retro-Graphics Terminal Enhancement and started shipping it in early1981. This added high resolution vector graphics capability to theVT100, but also allowed the VT100 to be used as a text terminal at thesame time. The VT640 Retro-Graphics Terminal Enhancement was very wellreceived and something that DEC should have done themselves, and on May4, 1982, DEC announced that they were providing maintenance and supportfor the Retro-Graphics Terminal Enhancements from Digital Engineering,Inc..Neither Digital Engineering, Inc. nor Digital Equipment Corporationsold a VT640 terminal that said "VT640" on it. They were all retrofitsthat could be installed by Digital Engineering, Inc., by DigitalEquipment Corporation, or by the customers themselves.The system integrator in New England chose the VT640 as their graphicsterminal for their digital synthesizer and sold it for $4,500 (on topof the system itself, which was $15,000-$70,000). Every VT640, eventhose sold by them, said "VT100" on the front and rear. Some said"Retro-Graphics" in white and orange and some said "Retro-GraphicsTerminal Enhancement" in silver and blue, and some didn't say anythingat all except for "VT100". Many people have contacted me for a VT100 touse with their digital synthesizer, thinking that it was the digitalsynthesizer terminal, but it was not. The VT100 (or ADM-3A, etc.) couldbe used with the digital synthesizer, but only to run the utilities forformatting disks and system configuration, and to access the commandprompt, but can not work with the software and sonic sound displayscreens, etc., those pages require the VT640.I hope this helps to clear things up.