altivo

I actually cleaned off part of my radio desk today. I dug through and sorted out junk until I recovered the big heavy Hallicrafters HT-37 transmitter that was buried back there, and moved it to the bottom shelf in my closet. I haven't turned it on in years because it sucks up so much power. Much as I love the look of the thing, my tiny transceivers are good enough.

The reason I finally got around to this was the arrival of the second VT220 terminal. This one works. At least, when supplied with a keyboard (it had none) courtesy of the first one that UPS damaged in shipping. It took some puzzling to figure out what kind of serial cable was needed, but I got it hooked up to the console zero port of the Alpha, altered the firmware configuration to use it as the operator's console, and fired everything up. It works. I figured that display was going to look nostalgic, and indeed it does. So does the keyboard. DEC keyboards are wider than today's standard PC keyboard, and have a number of extra keys. The screen font on the VT220 is distinctive, too. This one is a real oldie, white lettering on a black background. It does everything the way it should, except for a keyboard glitch. The shift and ctrl keys don't seem to work. I guess I'll have to take the keyboard apart and have a look at that.

I'll have to finish cleaning up the desk this weekend. There's a Hallicrafters SX-96 receiver buried on the other half. I can put it away with the transmitter and have new working space. Hooray.

No aurora last night. In spite of predictions, none tonight either. The activity index is all the way down to four. The weather is nice, though. Cooler and dryer. Too bad there are droves of mosquitoes again.