> On Jan 14, 2026, at 3:03 PM, Wayne S <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Paul, knowing that you worked with typset-11 , would you know of a copy of
> the software that’s available? Another list member has acquired a vt52 and
> asked what it was used for. Typeset-11 came up.
You mean VT61? VT52 is a regular terminal. VT61/t is one of the two
Typeset-11 specific terminals (the low end one, for use by classified ad takers
and also used by reporters with modest editing requirements). The VT71/t is
the fancy editing terminal. To make things confusing, Bitsavers has a VT21
which I think is a prototype of the VT71, I never saw it as an actual device.
And the VT72 as far as I know is a VT71 with a different color scheme, intended
for a VMS based typesetting system. I don't remember if that ever shipped.
As for the software, I have occasionally searched for it but seen no evidence
of a copy anywhere. At one point I talked to the curator of a Massachusetts
printing technology museum who apparently at one time had a Typeset-11 system,
but got rid of it because computers weren't their thing and apparently does not
have anything left of it.
It would be really neat if anything could be found. The software is a
collection of applications running on RSX-11/D or IAS, including a couple of
unusual I/O devices. Some of it could probably be reconstructed if the
software could be found. Emulating a typesetter would be an interesting
problem given that they all had vendor-dependent coding and possibly
customer-dependent coding (each customer would order a particular set of
fonts). The VT71 hardware documentation exists on Bitsavers; I haven't found
the firmware either, though a Typeset-11 system would have that since it's
downloaded. I actually asked the author of that code about it but it doesn't
sound like he has a copy.
paul
