A developer bought a 1978 DEC VT-100 terminal and attempted to use it as their main terminal in 2026, motivated by building a modern coding agent for the terminal. The experiment revealed three main compatibility challenges: flow control issues (requiring a Linux VM since macOS dropped support), slow 9600 baud speed requiring differential rendering to minimize redraws, and escape sequence incompatibilities including Unicode and OSC sequences that required adding ASCII-only and legacy modes. Despite these hurdles, the VT-100 was made functional for vim and the custom app, and the exercise surfaced real-world compatibility improvements that later benefited enterprise customers with non-Unicode terminals.
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