10 Nov
2015
10 Nov
'15
11:03 a.m.
Now that would be a find.
As it so happens one of the guys who worked with me at NL
lives locally and we are both on the local council so I see him often.
In fact his wife (also councilor) was here yesterday.
As he was still there after I left to join DEC he may know more.
The keyboards some were not cherry.
There was one type that counted through a matrix until it found the
connected crosspoint and stopped the count. The count was your key code.
The early ones were blue and the later ones brown and gray I think.
My wife worked at a local building society and they had some.
One day I showed her a label on the back of hers stating
'Tested OK RVS' (needless to say RVS is me) and a date
before we even met. Coincidences are great.
I'd love to get it running for old times sake.
On 10/11/15 18:00, tony duell wrote:
I remember
joining DEC in early October 1973. At the time I was working
for a small local company called Newbury Labs.
When I was an undergraduate at
Cambridge University (1985-1988) they were
still using (somewhat later) Newbury terminals on the mainframe. Due to the
metal cases they were often known as 'biscuit tins'.
I rescued one when they were being cleared out, I probably still have it somewhere.
It has a separate keyboard (just an array of switches) and I think has a VT131-like
editing mode (probably totall different commands though). I remember inside there's
a monitor PCB on the back of the upper part of the case and one or two boards
full of logic. Probably a microprocessor in there, and quite a bit of TTL. I remember
some 74181 ALUs (of all things!)
-tony