16 Feb
2008
16 Feb
'08
12:12 a.m.
Hey all --
Picked up an old dumb terminal (and I feel secure in calling this one
"old") today at Re-PC in Tukwila, WA (I'm starting to really dig this
place...). It's a CDC, labeled on the back as a "Display Terminal" (go
figure), Equip. Id #CC5A5-A, Series Code 2, Part #15551800. I haven't
been able to find any information on this beast at all on the 'net.
I've put up some pictures here:
http://yahozna.dyndns.org/computers/cdcterminal/ (Haven't had a chance
to clean it up yet, so it's kinda smudgy...)
My favorite thing about this terminal is the huge, backlit buttons on
the front for Power, etc... very cool :). I've powered it up after
giving it a check-out, and it appears to work fine. I haven't hooked it
up to a serial line yet, but that's coming... maybe Linux has a termcap
entry for this thing? :)
Opening it up reveals repair tags with dates in 1974. There are four
PCBs mounted inside, connected by a ton of ribbon connectors (there's no
backplane to speak of). Looks like it's all TTL, though I haven't taken
the boards out to investigate. Not sure I want to disturb them :).
Anyone know anything about this thing? What's it capable of? What was
it originally connected to?
Thanks!
Josh
16 Feb
16 Feb
12:23 p.m.
I haven't seen one like that before, but it doesn't appear to be a
PLATO capable terminal.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
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4:37 p.m.
Josh Dersch wrote:
Hey all --
Picked up an old dumb terminal (and I feel secure in calling this one
"old") today at Re-PC in Tukwila, WA (I'm starting to really dig this
place...). It's a CDC, labeled on the back as a "Display Terminal" (go
figure), Equip. Id #CC5A5-A, Series Code 2, Part #15551800. I haven't
been able to find any information on this beast at all on the 'net.
I've put up some pictures here:
http://yahozna.dyndns.org/computers/cdcterminal/ (Haven't had a chance
to clean it up yet, so it's kinda smudgy...)
My favorite thing about this terminal is the huge, backlit buttons on
the front for Power, etc... very cool :). I've powered it up after
giving it a check-out, and it appears to work fine. I haven't hooked it
up to a serial line yet, but that's coming... maybe Linux has a termcap
entry for this thing? :)
Opening it up reveals repair tags with dates in 1974. There are four
PCBs mounted inside, connected by a ton of ribbon connectors (there's no
backplane to speak of). Looks like it's all TTL, though I haven't taken
the boards out to investigate. Not sure I want to disturb them :).
Anyone know anything about this thing? What's it capable of? What was
it originally connected to?
Well, it looks just like the surplus one we acquired in my high school
electronics lab ca 1977, and which we connected up as the console to a Motorola
MEK 6800 board. I got to take it home over one summer, wrote some (manually
assembled) cassette-tape storage routines for it.
If it's the same as the one I recall playing with, it was a fairly 'typical'
remote (note the CTS indicator) time-sharing terminal of the early 70's: RS232
with modem control lines, printer port, may have been upper-case only - don't
remember for certain.
..pull the boards and check the date codes and technology of the ICs. Nice
find, IMHO, those random-logic pre-microproc CRT terminals are getting pretty
rare, most of them were scrapped by the late 70's/early 80's.
(If I may make a general request to people when putting up photos like this,
resizing them if possible (they're all near to 2MB), down to something sensible
for casual perusal/download would be helpful to some.)
(.. I like the big old "No. 6 Ignitor" dry cells in the background, haven't
seen any of those since the 60's.)
5:16 p.m.
I love it!
I am going to take one of your back panel images, and imbed it into a windows error
message - 'ERROR - verify your settings are correct.'
This recycle thing is a boon for us collectors huh?
On my day job, I am a designer, and this new RoHS requirement for all electronics is
breaking us, but at the same time it gets media attention so goodies dont end up in the
dumpster.
Think of it a s don't pour your auto waste oil in the gutter - now everybody takes
their used electronics to the recycle place, GREAT!
Jed, California is the place you outa be. I bet the green hot tub granola crunchers have
the best recycle shops.
I just have to find mine, in Reno....
Randy
Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2008 13:37:31 -0800
From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca
To: General at priv-edmwaa04.telusplanet.net
CC:
Subject: Re: Help identifying Mystery CDC Terminal...
Josh Dersch wrote:
_________________________________________________________________
Shed those extra pounds with MSN and The Biggest Loser!
http://biggestloser.msn.com/
Hey all --
Picked up an old dumb terminal (and I feel secure in calling this one
"old") today at Re-PC in Tukwila, WA (I'm starting to really dig this
place...). It's a CDC, labeled on the back as a "Display Terminal" (go
figure), Equip. Id #CC5A5-A, Series Code 2, Part #15551800. I haven't
been able to find any information on this beast at all on the 'net.
I've put up some pictures here:
http://yahozna.dyndns.org/computers/cdcterminal/ (Haven't had a chance
to clean it up yet, so it's kinda smudgy...)
My favorite thing about this terminal is the huge, backlit buttons on
the front for Power, etc... very cool :). I've powered it up after
giving it a check-out, and it appears to work fine. I haven't hooked it
up to a serial line yet, but that's coming... maybe Linux has a termcap
entry for this thing? :)
Opening it up reveals repair tags with dates in 1974. There are four
PCBs mounted inside, connected by a ton of ribbon connectors (there's no
backplane to speak of). Looks like it's all TTL, though I haven't taken
the boards out to investigate. Not sure I want to disturb them :).
Anyone know anything about this thing? What's it capable of? What was
it originally connected to?
Well, it looks just like the surplus one we acquired in my high school
electronics lab ca 1977, and which we connected up as the console to a Motorola
MEK 6800 board. I got to take it home over one summer, wrote some (manually
assembled) cassette-tape storage routines for it.
If it's the same as the one I recall playing with, it was a fairly 'typical'
remote (note the CTS indicator) time-sharing terminal of the early 70's: RS232
with modem control lines, printer port, may have been upper-case only - don't
remember for certain.
..pull the boards and check the date codes and technology of the ICs. Nice
find, IMHO, those random-logic pre-microproc CRT terminals are getting pretty
rare, most of them were scrapped by the late 70's/early 80's.
(If I may make a general request to people when putting up photos like this,
resizing them if possible (they're all near to 2MB), down to something sensible
for casual perusal/download would be helpful to some.)
(.. I like the big old "No. 6 Ignitor" dry cells in the background,
haven't
seen any of those since the 60's.) 
5:39 p.m.
Josh,
Have you tried pinging the guys over at http://www.cray-cyber.org/ to
see if they may an idea of the lineage and history behind that beastie.
Curt
Josh Dersch wrote:
Hey all --
Picked up an old dumb terminal (and I feel secure in calling this one
"old") today at Re-PC in Tukwila, WA (I'm starting to really dig this
place...). It's a CDC, labeled on the back as a "Display Terminal" (go
figure), Equip. Id #CC5A5-A, Series Code 2, Part #15551800. I haven't
been able to find any information on this beast at all on the 'net.
I've put up some pictures here:
http://yahozna.dyndns.org/computers/cdcterminal/ (Haven't had a chance
to clean it up yet, so it's kinda smudgy...)
My favorite thing about this terminal is the huge, backlit buttons on
the front for Power, etc... very cool :). I've powered it up after
giving it a check-out, and it appears to work fine. I haven't hooked it
up to a serial line yet, but that's coming... maybe Linux has a termcap
entry for this thing? :)
Opening it up reveals repair tags with dates in 1974. There are four
PCBs mounted inside, connected by a ton of ribbon connectors (there's no
backplane to speak of). Looks like it's all TTL, though I haven't taken
the boards out to investigate. Not sure I want to disturb them :).
Anyone know anything about this thing? What's it capable of? What was
it originally connected to?
7:53 p.m.
Nope, hadn't even heard of them, but I've now sent them an e-mail. I'll
let you guys know what I find out. Thanks for the tip!
Josh
Curt @ Atari Museum wrote:
Josh,
Have you tried pinging the guys over at http://www.cray-cyber.org/
to see if they may an idea of the lineage and history behind that
beastie.
Curt
8:41 p.m.
In article <47B7579B.FB5B216F at cs.ubc.ca>,
Brent Hilpert <hilpert at cs.ubc.ca> writes:
..pull the boards and check the date codes and
technology of the ICs. Nice
find, IMHO, those random-logic pre-microproc CRT terminals are getting pretty
rare, most of them were scrapped by the late 70's/early 80's.
Yes, definately. Terminals with SSI/MSI logic and not microprocessors
are indeed getting rare. I only have a couple after having been
collecting terminals for a few years now.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>
9:20 p.m.
Brent Hilpert wrote:
Well, it looks just like the surplus one we acquired
in my high school
electronics lab ca 1977, and which we connected up as the console to a Motorola
MEK 6800 board. I got to take it home over one summer, wrote some (manually
assembled) cassette-tape storage routines for it.
If it's the same as the one I recall playing with, it was a fairly 'typical'
remote (note the CTS indicator) time-sharing terminal of the early 70's: RS232
with modem control lines, printer port, may have been upper-case only - don't
remember for certain.
..pull the boards and check the date codes and technology of the ICs. Nice
find, IMHO, those random-logic pre-microproc CRT terminals are getting pretty
rare, most of them were scrapped by the late 70's/early 80's.
(If I may make a general request to people when putting up photos like this,
resizing them if possible (they're all near to 2MB), down to something sensible
for casual perusal/download would be helpful to some.)
(.. I like the big old "No. 6 Ignitor" dry cells in the background,
haven't
seen any of those since the 60's.)
Apologies for the huge file sizes, I always forget to put up smaller
files for that sort of thing :).
I'll attempt to pull the boards out this weekend once I clear off some
more space on the bench. I've powered the terminal up (checked the
power supply out and it seems to be working great) and hooked it up to
my Linux box and it seems to work almost perfectly. There's some bad
RAM (assuming this thing uses RAM), though -- a couple of character
cells show up incorrectly (dropping the lowest two bits). And by "a
couple" I mean exactly two :). The display needs a few capacitors
replaced, but the picture's still very good given the age.
The terminal seems to provide an 80x16 character display of both upper
and lower-case letters. It has some sort of memory expansion option
installed, according to tags in the case... I have no idea what extra
functionality that gives it. There's also a huge empty space below the
monitor/cardcage/power supply which seems to have been meant for some
additional expansion options, it'd be interesting to know what those were...
Josh
18 Feb
18 Feb
12:16 a.m.
Josh Dersch wrote:
There's some bad
RAM (assuming this thing uses RAM), though -- a couple of character
cells show up incorrectly (dropping the lowest two bits). And by "a
couple" I mean exactly two :). The display needs a few capacitors
replaced, but the picture's still very good given the age.
If you're not familiar with terminals of this vintage, aside from the 14/16 pin
SSI/MSI ICs in there, you'll likely find a MOS character generator ROM
(probably the only large (>16 pin) chip). The memory would typically be early
MOS shift register chips (although the symptoms you describe suggest addressed
mem) or early MOS DRAM.
The terminal seems to provide an 80x16 character
display of both upper
and lower-case letters.
It has some sort of memory expansion option
installed, according to tags in the case... I have no idea what extra
functionality that gives it.
Likely a second page/screen of 80*16, how to switch between them will be the
question, might be keys/switches or it might be control characters like DCx, or FF.
BTW, beyond the displayable characters, screen manipulation is likely limited
to what can be accomplished with the ASCII control characters. Check out what
FF,VT,HT,BS,&c. do. (Like this one, *real* terminals have the control codes
imprinted on the keys.) (Although I'll certainly defer to somebody who may kno
CDC better and whether they had some internal standard for terminal control perhaps.)
There's also a huge empty space below the
monitor/cardcage/power supply which seems to have been meant for some
additional expansion options, it'd be interesting to know what those were...
That sounds familiar, that's where another guy in the school stuffed in the MEK
6800 board and hacked it into the power supply and RS232 line. (I confess I
didn't really like it, even then I wasn't fond of hacking up original, intact,
equipment.)
9:14 a.m.
In article <47B914A7.5A4B6B0A at cs.ubc.ca>,
Brent Hilpert <hilpert at cs.ubc.ca> writes:
(Like this one, *real* terminals have the control
codes
imprinted on the keys.)
LOL! I always laugh when someone trots out one of these opinions!
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>
19 Feb
19 Feb
1 a.m.
> ..pull the boards and check the date codes and
technology of the ICs.
> Nice
> find, IMHO, those random-logic pre-microproc CRT terminals are
> getting pretty
> rare, most of them were scrapped by the late 70's/early 80's.
>
I pulled out the boards (and made scans of them while I was at it --
http://yahozna.dyndns.org/computers/cdcterminal/pcb -- warning, really
large images again so as to make the chips readable.) I think, if I'm
deciphering the date codes correctly, that the components are from
mid-1972.
I also got a response from the folks at cray-cyber.org. They don't know
much about it either, but they think that it's probably a CDC 711
terminal (possibly a 713, though the 713 only supported 300 baud), and
they even dug up a termcap entry for it (which I have yet to try):
C3|713|cdc713|Control Data 713:\
:am:bs:bw:cl=^X:co#80:kd=j:kh=H:kl=h:kr=l:ku=k:\
:li#16:ll=^Y:nd=^U:se=^O:sg=1:so=^N:up=^Z:x7:
and a bit more info:
Control Data Corporation 713
Status: Supported by ":CRTSTY CDC713".
Users: DPR
Price: forgotten in the dawn of time
Screen: 16 x 80
Chars: 7 x 9 with descenders
Keybrd: rotten
Speeds: 110,300
Has: Random, CLEOL, CLEOS, Standout
Lacks: Addr, Tabs, InsChar, DelChar, InsLine, DelLine, Overstrike
Misfeatures: 300 baud maximum speed!
Additionally, the description at http://www.museumwaalsdorp.nl/computer/en/cybequip.html
seems to match what I've got pretty closely.
So that's it. Seems like this'd be a nice terminal to use with my
SBC6120 (may just mount it inside given how much room there is :))
Thanks for all the feedback and input. Nice to know a bit more about
this thing.
- Josh
16 Feb
16 Feb
5:28 p.m.
On 2/16/08, Josh Dersch <derschjo at msu.edu> wrote:
Hey all --
Picked up an old dumb terminal (and I feel secure in calling this one
"old") today at Re-PC in Tukwila, WA (I'm starting to really dig this
place...). It's a CDC, labeled on the back as a "Display Terminal" (go
figure), Equip. Id #CC5A5-A, Series Code 2, Part #15551800. I haven't
been able to find any information on this beast at all on the 'net.
I've put up some pictures here:
http://yahozna.dyndns.org/computers/cdcterminal/ (Haven't had a chance
to clean it up yet, so it's kinda smudgy...)
My favorite thing about this terminal is the huge, backlit buttons on
the front for Power, etc... very cool :). I've powered it up after
giving it a check-out, and it appears to work fine. I haven't hooked it
up to a serial line yet, but that's coming... maybe Linux has a termcap
entry for this thing? :)
Opening it up reveals repair tags with dates in 1974. There are four
PCBs mounted inside, connected by a ton of ribbon connectors (there's no
backplane to speak of). Looks like it's all TTL, though I haven't taken
the boards out to investigate. Not sure I want to disturb them :).
Anyone know anything about this thing? What's it capable of? What was
it originally connected to?
Thanks!
Josh
I'm afraid I have no idea what that is, but it's great! I especially
like the baud setting knob on the back.
http://yahozna.dyndns.org/computers/cdcterminal/CIMG1330.JPG <-- Is
that a PERQ terminal in the background, by chance? I'd like to find
one of those as least as much as I'd like to find a BLIT or one of
your CDC terminals :)
John
--
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
7:54 p.m.
John Floren wrote:
I'm afraid I have no idea what that is, but
it's great! I especially
like the baud setting knob on the back.
http://yahozna.dyndns.org/computers/cdcterminal/CIMG1330.JPG <-- Is
that a PERQ terminal in the background, by chance? I'd like to find
one of those as least as much as I'd like to find a BLIT or one of
your CDC terminals :)
John
Yes, that is a PERQ in the background. See
http://yahozna.dyndns.org/computers/perq/index.html for more pictures :).
Josh
5976
days inactive
5979
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12 comments
6 participants
participants (6)
-
curt＠atarimuseum.com -
derschjo＠msu.edu -
hilpert＠cs.ubc.ca -
legalize＠xmission.com -
rdawson16＠hotmail.com -
slawmaster＠gmail.com