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Got this cool looking, old terminal.

Gorgonops

Moderator
Staff member
It looks like it's a macro key for sending a predefined ASCII sequence at the touch of a button. Apparently some paper teletypes had them as well, programmed by physically breaking tabs off a drum. (It looks like on early LSI terminals you could get your custom message burned on a PROM, later ones had nonvolatile memory.) In practice you'd use it to store a station identifier, or possibly an initialization/login sequence to send to the host as needed.

 

ScutBoy

Well-known member
Huh, I had seen that 1983 manual but failed to notice it also mentioned the "+". Scanning the manual it seems like it's pretty much a 3A with the fuller keyboard and, well, that's pretty much it.

Sort of wish I could lay my hands on one of these to use with my NorthStar CP/M box, assuming I ever get around to getting that working.
Gorgonops,

If you are looking for a serial terminal, I may have a Televideo 925 to part with. Looks very much like a classic VT-100. I also some DEC VT-220s but I'd have to make sure I have a keyboard to send along.

 

Kaa

Active member
Wow does that bring back some memories sitting a very cold room coding COBOL and RP/G in High school. Aside from getting an old VAX to put in your basement, with a manual and the Modem port on the back, I would think that some tinkering could get that old terminal hooked up to the serial GPIO pins of a Pi as stated above. might be a good way to start learning some Linux!

 

MacNoob

Well-known member
I have an old Vax (Vaxstation 4000) sitting right here behind me - using my windows PC with a serial port as a terminal.

That ADM would work fine with it.

 

Nathan

Well-known member
Wow does that bring back some memories sitting a very cold room coding COBOL and RP/G in High school. Aside from getting an old VAX to put in your basement, with a manual and the Modem port on the back, I would think that some tinkering could get that old terminal hooked up to the serial GPIO pins of a Pi as stated above. might be a good way to start learning some Linux!
I mean somebody got a literal 1930s teletype working on a Linux box with some custom hardware adapters,  so surely a dumb terminal would be just fine. Of course you probably do need to configure the Linux end properly.

https://www.curiousmarc.com/computing/teletype-model-19

https://adcurtin.wordpress.com/2014/01/26/adm3a-ancient-dumb-terminal/

 
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