25 Aug
2010
25 Aug
'10
6:25 p.m.
On Wednesday (08/25/2010 at 10:48PM +0100), Tony Duell wrote:
There was a thing I saw as a kid and wanted really badly... called a
Whisper Writer. I believe it was built my 3M company but was a very
small, very portable (for late 70's technology) thermal printer +
keyboard with acoustic coupler. Is it one of those by chance?
Well, yes... but a CDC Cyber 800 or 875 to be specific, is kinda large
for my basement ;-) So, that one gets emulated.
For DEC stuff, it's mostly a curiousity to explore the old OSes. I would
love to have an 11/23 or 11/34 as they were one of the first systems
I wrote code on for money when I was in high school. But, again, I'm
balancing space for capability. Instead, I seem to be collecting the
real peripheral devices and spoofing the "mainframe in the basement"
with emulators.
My terminal collection is still growing but I do have several TI Silent
700. One is the first generation model 725... which is the size of a
giant suitcase and has a Novation acoustic coupler on the right hand side.
I also have a couple TI 745 which are the smaller (closer to portable)
units with the acoustic coupler at the back of the unit.
I worked for Multi-Tech Systems here in MN for many years... first
in the late 70's and again in the early 90's and of course collected
souvenirs along the way. I have several FM-30 acoustic couplers which
were the first digital discriminator based modem that Multi-Tech built
and I have those connected to a pair of DEC LA120. This configuration
replicates what we had in grade school and high school for calling
into the state-wide computer network, which, surprise, was a Cyber 800
series mainframe running NOS (and a University of MN derivative OS).
So, I can dialup the "Cyber" from my LA120 and play Oregon Trail ;-)
I have a Teletype model 33 that was OEM'd by Anderson Jacobsen and has
one of their acoustic couplers mounted on the right-hand side where some
TWX models of the 33 would have a rotary or DTMF dial. This has the
full size acoustic coupler with HALF/FULL slide switch and big green
CARRIER light. Kinda fun.
I have a Heathkit H19 terminal that I built in 1978 which is a "floater".
Sometimes it's hooked to an acoustic coupler (an FM-300, which was
Multi-Tech's first product-- a completely analog-- as in lots of opamps--
acoustic coupled modem and sometimes hardwired to the terminal server
and sometimes connected to one of several other Multi-Tech direct connect
modems such as a 1200 baud MT212AH (one of their first smart modems)
and an MT932 which is a 9600 baud v.32 unit.
I guess this place is a celebration of old MN computing and computing
products circa 1970-1980. It's definitely constrained to things I had
as a kid or have used in my career (ah, mostly constrained that is ;-) )
Chris
--
Chris Elmquist
In article <20100825002826.GA14137 at n0jcf.net>,
Chris Elmquist <chrise at pobox.com> writes:
I am not a terminal fanatic, but I have a couple of somewhat unusual
accoustically-coupled devices. The first (and I suspect more common) is a
portable thermal prinitng terminal (no, not a Silent 700) with an
accoustic coupler on the back. I've never used the coupler, there is also
an RS232 socket which I have used... (actually the model TLS-4, which a friend loned
to me) I have a
collection of acoustic coupled terminal devices and modems here
[...]
Do tell!
As a fellow terminal freak, I'd love to hear what kind of acoustic
coupled terminal devices you have! The second isn't a terminal, it's an EPROM
programemr (!). It appears to
have been used by some company's field service to download and program
ROMs on-site. A bopx with the accoustic cups on top, a few control
switches and a ZIF socket.
Very interesting. One wonders what sort of error correction they were
able to implement to ensure that any line noise didn't trash the stuff
you were committing to the EPROM.
I really must make a phone line simulator and/or a
telephone exchange...
I would sure have done so too if I hadn't been able to scam this Teltone
unit from my buddy.
My plan is to
do something very similar to what you've done: connect
the terminals to a terminal server and then have hosts reachable from
that. It never occured to me to have vintage hosts running in
emulators on a PC, though, what a great idea! It really completes the
vintage experience. Imparting that vintage terminal experience is
Siurel to _complete_ the vintage experience you should have the real
vintage host (and not an emulator) running on the other end of the line.
That's what I would do.