What are the really unusual or weird computers?

On 30/06/07, Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote: Ohh takes me back. One of my first tasks in my first full time programming job (circa 1990) was to work with two devices called "telexbox" and "faxbox". These acted a little like serial printers, but 'printing' to telex and telephone lines respectively. You dropped a file of text into them, and they would queue up messages for sending. They'd also receive them and hand them back to you. They had a unique command set, to allow you to manage the queues, etc. (I think they were actually designed so they could be used as "dumb ascii" serial printers if needed - the dial/addressing commands could be placed in the first line of text sent when printing your word-processed document.) My job was writing a front end on a multi-user BOS system (in COBOL!) to let each user send and receive messages independantly, manage their own queues, etc, but not see other users' activity (unless they were supervisor level). It was also about the only time I ever used the telex->Prestel gateway - it helped to have somewhere to send test messages to and receive them from! Rob