Mystery (unusual) 1973 terminal

[Jules Richardson]

On 2/12/21 8:08 AM, Paul Koning wrote:
> The photos are not particularly helpful; they show parts of the device
> but not close enough to tell the details, while much of the case is not
> shown.  Is there any manufacturer label or serial number tag on the
> case?

I'll see if I can get him to share more photos - I know he'd posted some of 
the complete system a few months ago when he picked it up, so maybe he can 
add them to the Google folder.

Unfortunately it seems that the Conrac on the tube is the only kind of 
branding on the whole thing. I wonder if it had a decal / emblem on the 
keyboard originally and that's fallen off.

> One of those boards is full of rather sloppy ECO wires, which makes it
> feel like a home made job, but the rest look like decent quality
> commercial pieces.

Yes, the general board quality (and other things, etc. the cage around the 
cards) just seems too nice for something that might have been a homebrew or 
prototype - it feels to me more like a commercial product, but one in its 
very early days before they'd got all the kinks worked out.

>  And yes, the blower is rather curious, it's hard to
> see how a device like this might dissipate enough power to need that
> kind of air mover.

That aspect of it seems like a case of "just use what we have" to me, i.e. 
they wanted to duct warm air out the back without much clearance, and just 
happened to have a source of those blower assemblies. It's a bit odd that 
they're dumping air from around the PSU but there's no airflow through the 
card cage at all.

Jules