Anyone familiar with these vintage touchscreens?

[Diane Bruce]

On Sun, Oct 20, 2019 at 03:47:06PM -0400, Nigel Johnson via cctalk wrote:
> You are probably right about the 6809, the stuff I worked on was all in 

I knew one of the developers who was working on the 6809's. OS/9 was
a very cool OS as it was very Unix like.

> the development stages for the project, and at the server end.  I did 
> field engineering for Transduction, and we supplied equipment to Norpak, 
> although I can't for the life of me remember what!  I remember going to 
> visit their headquarters in Pakenham and was surprised to find it was a 
> set of farm outbuildings!  That was the NORton family of PAKenham, 
> whence they got the name.

The Norton's are well known here in Ottawa.
Our Amateur Radio club here has the Joe Norton award.

https://www.oarc.net/pages/about/awards-1/joe-norton-award/

"Joe Norton was co-founder of one of the first high-tech companies in Ottawa,
 Computing Devices of Canada, which he helped start in 1948. Joe balanced his
 work life with family and grew a number of hobbies. He was an avid amateur
 radio enthusiast and when VE3PN became a silent key in October 1979 his
 family donated all his amateur radio equipment to the OARC and asked that
 the donation be used to assist beginning amateurs. After considerable
 deliberation in 1982 the OARC decided to sell the gear and use the
 proceeds to establish a trust fund. Since 1985 proceeds from the trust
 fund have provided new amateurs in the National Capital region with a cash
 award."

Oddly I worked for Computing Devices Canada for a short while too.

> 
> The development system from Carling Drive in Ottawa was transferred to 
> Bell's Simcoe Street office in Toronto when they went live, and I got a 

Not the Crystal Bay Exchange? ;) A lot of young programmers got 
themselves burned out working on the development systems. I never worked
on it when I was at BNR hence never saw it but heard the horror stories.
The "switch" was a single source code file said to be the largest
program in the world. Single compilation no linking. No wonder it
took so long to compile. The poor SOBs who worked on it were young 'uns
straight out of school and forced to test their code at midnight or 3am.


> service call there to work on the DMAX/16s again, as somebody ad removed 
> the remote diagnostics panel from the PDP11/70  and forgot to replace 
> the NPG jumper on the backplane, causing bus hangs.

;)

> 
> cheers,
> 
> Nigel (for people who knew me back then, I was called 'Bill' Johnson!)
> 
> 
...
> >
> > (The processor is indeed a 6809, as Diane was mentioning.)
> >
> > Graphics was very much a part of the Telidon/NAPLPS protocol.
> > (Note: Colour capabilities may differ between terminals, the protocol 
> > was such as to permit a range of compatible implementations.)
> >
> > While the store directory terminal of the OP 'could' have been a 
> > Telidon/NAPLPS terminal, I'd be placing my bets more on the Apple-II 
> > (or similar) as others mentioned. Strikes me more as a standalone 
> > unit. I think using a videotex/teletext/Telidon/NAPLPS terminal would 
> > have been awkward and the economics poor, there'd either have to be a 
> > rented comm line to a remote server, an additional local server, or 
> > storage hacked onto the terminal.
...
> >
> > I believe the NAPLPS designation (designation as an industry standard) 
> > came rather late in the game, an attempt to gain some recognition for 
> > a dying project. As "Telidon", it had begun years earlier.

Yes hence most people referred to it as Telidon. It was a cool idea
but the Internet and HTML killed it good and proper.

> >
> 
> -- 
> Nigel Johnson
> MSc., MIEEE
> VE3ID/G4AJQ/VA3MCU


> 
> Amateur Radio, the origin of the open-source concept!

Why yes. And the original maker movement!

73 Diane Bruce, VA3DB
-- 
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