I first learned BASIC on a DEC VT back in 7th grade at Mary E. Wells Jr High School in Southbridge, MA. Mr Dragon ran the (usually empty) computer room there at the time. While I quickly tired of the monochrome display when I first discovered sprite graphics on the Commodore VIC-20 and C=64, the DEC terminal still holds a place in my heart for being the first computer I ever programmed.
I recall I wrote a BASIC program on the VT that simply printed out lines of text that looked like a rocket. The slow scrolling speed on those machines when in smooth scrolling mode made it look like the rocket was taking off on the screen. I had to put in lots of prints to ensure it scrolled off the top of the screen ("GOTO" would come later)
All these years I assumed it was a VT 100 or a VT 101, because that's what it looked like. However, I just realized today that it was actually a DEC VT-180 Robin computer. I knew it was running CP/M, had several floppy drives, and had (IIRC) MBASIC and Multiplan, and I do recall it being called a Robin.
Oh, and while we're on a nostalgia trip, the Little Professor was my favorite toy for a while when I was a kid. You could play hangman and math games on it. I recall going through two of these, and finally ending the last one's life when it suffered the fate of many of my more interesting toys: being dismantled. :-)
