16 Mar
2007
16 Mar
'07
4:39 a.m.
Old terminals
In the UK in the early 1970's I worked for a (then small) UK
company called Newbury Labs.
We made VDU's or video terminals. The early types used eight bit
parallel shift registers as screen memory.
The model number was 2480 i.e. 24 Rows of 80 Characters. They came in
steel enclosures (painted blue!!)
The screen was a 12" tube as used in mono portable TV's.
We used to spend half an hour on each one fixing up the screen geometry
with small magnets.
The newer ones used a crude stored program system made out of TTL ie no
Microprocessors.
Rod Smallwood
-----Original Message-----
From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org
[mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Richard
Sent: 16 March 2007 00:28
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: old terminals...
In article <45F8EAD6.9070607 at jetnet.ab.ca>,
woodelf <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> writes:
Richard wrote:
No, those aren't the weird ones. Those are the unobtainable ones.
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The weirder terminals don't use a CPU at all.
They use SSI/MSI TTL
logic.
I thought the weird ones used Delay lines and/or Core Memory. 
16 Mar
16 Mar
4:21 p.m.
Old terminals
In the UK in the early 1970's I worked for a (then small) UK
company called Newbury Labs.
FWIW, Newbury terminals were common at Cambridge University in the 1980s
(but were being replaced by BBC micros running a terminal emoulator). I
think they were around at other UK universities too.
We made VDU's or video terminals. The early types
used eight bit
parallel shift registers as screen memory.
The model number was 2480 i.e. 24 Rows of 80 Characters. They came in
steel enclosures (painted blue!!)
The screen was a 12" tube as used in mono portable TV's.
When I needed a replacement CRT for a Volker-Craig terminal (it has an
APL cahracter set, which is why I was repairing it), the only way to get
one was to buy a cheap protable TV and remove the CRT from it. Nobody
stocked the CRT on its own.
We used to spend half an hour on each one fixing up
the screen geometry
with small magnets.
The newer ones used a crude stored program system made out of TTL ie no
Microprocessors.
I have a Newbury terminal somwehre. I forget the model, but it's a later
one with a separate keyboard linked up by a wide ribbon cable (I think
the connections are just the row and column lines of a switch matrix,
there's not much, if any, electronics in the keyboard).
I've not been inside it for 20 years, but I thought there was a
microproceossor in there. I do rememeber a board of TTL incluing some
'181 ALUs, though.
-tony
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