I don’t think you can build this in a few weekends, assuming you can even get all the parts in that time. I would instead get a dumb terminal from eBay from th

I don’t think you can build this in a few weekends, assuming you can even get all the parts in that time. I would instead get a dumb terminal from eBay from the 70s or 80s (search “terminal” or “televideo” for one of the brand names) and hook it up to a raspberry pi via rs-232. There are several projects on the web showing how to do this (hint: getty on linux) No graphics and video, but you get a good keyboard and solid ascii output.