6 Jul
2009
6 Jul
'09
7:55 p.m.
Given that the ADM-3a is a truly 'dumb' terminal - in the sense that it's all
hardwired logic - I agree that it's most likely custom keycaps on the terminal and
custom software on the target computer. Unlike later terminals, there wasn't a
microprocessor under the hood, which in some ways makes the ADM-3a even more intriguing.
But the only modification of which I'm aware - providing for lower-case characters -
involved a change of character generation ROM and to some selection logic. (I did that on
one of mine.) -- Ian
________________________________________
From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of
Richard [legalize at xmission.com]
Sent: Monday, July 06, 2009 1:55 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: LSI ADM3A with an unusual keyboard
In article <f72ef6490907061202y1b98f990nbeee58c73365c82a at mail.gmail.com>,
Wulf daMan <wulfcub at gmail.com> writes:
This is a terminal customized for use with Xerox
centralized
production printers. 8700, 9700, late 1970's to early 1980's as I
recall. I have two of these terminals on-hand, one still has the
Xerox logo plate, the other does not. Both are operational though.
The terminal was set up with custom commands apparently, so that
pressing a particular key would send an entire command (This may have
been handled on the controller side though). [...]
This is a question that can be answered really quick by hooking it up
to a serial port and seeing what gets transmitted when you press that
key. I'm guessing there's nothing special about the terminal other
than the keycaps and the logo plate. If it really does do something
different, then it would be good to capture the ROM images.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
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