Mystery (unusual) 1973 terminal

[Jules Richardson]

Hi all,

Hopefully the following link works, but someone over on one of the Facebook 
vintage groups has this oddball terminal from 1973 that they've been 
looking for any information on:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-2uEFbi3OKBYr06y6yHnygDiLMtw2Qkj

... it's somewhat unconventional in that half the CRT is hidden from view 
within the machine, i.e. it only actually displays the top half of the 
display to the user - I've no idea if that's because it had a specific 
application where space was limited, or if it was simply that memory at the 
time was horribly expensive and so it was designed to only use a few lines 
(I know some vendors did that, although I think they typically presented 
the whole CRT and at least had the option of RAM upgrade to more lines).

The blower assembly seems a little on the homebrew side, but on the other 
hand the PCBs and case construction make it seem like a professional product.

The owner says the only label anywhere on the thing is the one on the CRT 
saying "Mfd in Japan for Conrac", but that's presumably just the CRT itself 
and not the entire machine.

I don't believe there's anything resembling a microprocessor in the system, 
it's all just TTL logic (the large white ceramic IC is an ACIA).

Oh, I believe the owner's in Canada, so it may be it was made there and 
never exported to other parts of the world.

cheers

Jules