Amber computer displays

[mtbc]

Before I graduated, I did a bit of freelance IT consulting. Over thirty years ago now, one of my jobs was to migrate a legal practice from their old Wang business system to a modern PC/Windows-based system. Following the rule that older computer stuff tends to be better, the Wang system was rather nice to use, I got to dig into it in working out what data they had there and how to extract it: I would bring that data home on 5¼" floppies and do some transformation to it before ingesting it into the new system.

The practice's main book-keeper had a computer with a display that was really lovely to read. It was amber, and crisp enough that I surmise it probably used real P3 phosphor, not just some colour setting. Given how much of what I do remains largely text-based, I wonder if I might appreciate there being some system now that I could buy that is basically such a display with some wired way to plug in a keyboard and serial networking so it can run as a text-based terminal client of a modern Linux system, or even just plug it straight in as some monochrome monitor for which we still have some ancient driver code in Linux.

Comments

[thewayne]

Ah, Wang. The state agency that I worked for in the late '80s/early '90s had two minis, a 7150 and a 7310. Lots of Wang Archiver workstations throughout the building. Their PACE database was the first relational truly database that I ever worked in, and I absolutely loved it. I always thought those Wangs were pretty good systems, but can't say that I ever worked on anything else except IBM mainframes and an AS/400.

Interestingly and coincidentally, my friend who got me the lead on my job there went from there to a law firm. I went from there to the city police dept.

I also had an amber monitor, an Amdek 310A.

[mtbc]

Ah, cool, glad you liked the Wang stuff too. Alas, I can't remember more detail of that one system I migrated.

Did you like the Amdek display? I'm curious partly because it's so long since I saw that kind of thing, I wish I could have a fresh view of how good it looks to me now. I don't suppose that these days we can get a monochrome LCD equivalent at the same wavelength.

[thewayne]

My first monitor when I bought a PC was the Amdek.  I liked it, though it was a small CRT as it had a carry handle built-in.  It was amusing playing color games on a monochrome monitor.  I can't remember where I was first exposed to the Amdek before I bought it, but I did like that monitor.  ChatGPT recommended RetroArch or ShaderGlass for potentially mimicking an Amdek.

[mtbc]

Mmm, I've wondered how good a simulation one might get when one's display is physically based on RGB LCD technology. Having said that, perhaps it's harder for me to tell the difference now that my eyes have aged!

[emperor]

For a while I used an old WySE serial terminal to talk to my regular linux system when I wanted terminal-only life.

[mtbc]

Oh, cool, some of those had quite crisp amber displays I think, though a quick look on eBay suggests that I might be looking some years too late!