Someone offered me an old-style Teletype machine semi-recently. I had to turn it down (I'm out of room, plus it violates my "I have to be able to lift it" rule).
But it happens I have a ham-operator friend who wants one, very much. He plans to use it on the air! So if you're out there, kind soul...?
Now there's a memory or two. Dad was a RTTY operator and repairman in the Navy for a lot of years. When I joined MARS he helped me get a Model 19 and a Model 28 running.
ReplyDeleteThat's when I learned the military definition of "portable" equipment. If it could be lifted by two men, or had an eye bolt so it could be lifted by a crane, it was portable.
Ah, I remember those! I had to send serial commands to one during my labs in school and I had one that read the paper tape to program the DEC PDP-8E test equipment at Western Electric and printed out final test results on manufactured equipment. IN THE 80's!
ReplyDeleteSigh....
Yep... first computer I worked on was also a PDP-8/e (20KB) running 4 KSR-33 teletypes. We at least had the high speed paper tape reader!
ReplyDeleteGood times!
I have a flxowriter you can have. Its ASR but i dont know if it can be adapted.
ReplyDeleteI remember those monsters well.
ReplyDeleteMy daughter is profoundly deaf and those machines were what she and her friends used with a telephone modem to communicate. [Mid to late 1970's]
The one she had weighed at least 200 pounds. Various deaf support groups would buy them surplus, recondition, and then offer at cost to the deaf community.
The first computer program I ever wrote, in what turned out to be my career,, was on a teletype machine hooked to a timeshare system.
ReplyDeleteI owe a lot to those loud, exuberant machines.