The 3179 terminal has arrived! Some bad news as well

The third time on the truck is the lucky trip, as the box was delivered at noon today. The packaging was intact and the terminal inside was well padded. I hauled it around to the bench to begin some testing.

The blinking light and beeps from the Logic Element that sits below the CRT suggest that this unit is working properly. The real evidence comes from what you see on the screen and how it responds over the coax cable, but this was a good start.

The bad news is that the CRT is exceedingly dim. At full brightness adjustment I can just barely see a thin blue line down near the bottom, probably a divider between the status line and the user accessible lines of the display. When I flip the test switch I don't see any characters - the screen should fill with characters to test out the character ROM mapping - but that could be due to the lack of a connected keyboard.

The most likely scenario here is that the tube is really worn out with massive oxidation on the cathode reducing electron emissions to paltry levels. There could be other failures in the Display Element or Logic Element that are causing this, but I suspect not. The reason is that the ebay listing for this had two terminals offered, and the picture showed the blue line about the same apparent brightness on both. Separate monitors and logic elements, unlikely to have the same electrical defect. 

I will turn it on at night and see what may appear in the dark while the Test switch is thrown. Again, I don't know if that would work sans keyboard. The other test I can do is to hook it up to my 3174 substitute and interrogate the terminal ID. If it responds properly that suggests at least partial correct operation of the Logic Element (base box).