Has anyone ever had or used a British Telecom Leopard Telex machine?
Posted by ErTnEc@reddit | vintagecomputing | View on Reddit | 12 comments
Posted by ErTnEc@reddit | vintagecomputing | View on Reddit | 12 comments
edwarddrexel@reddit
That's just the keyboard, there's a brown metal wedge which contains the actual brains of the teleprinter and allows you to connect a parallel printer up to give you the printouts of incoming messages. I've just picked up two of them, give me a few days and I can take some photos and post them. I have a little spiral bound manual for them too.
ErTnEc@reddit (OP)
Oh that would be awesome if you could! Certainly interested to understand what I'm missing but also any sort of documentation for this is a bonus!
edwarddrexel@reddit
Here's what I've got:
https://imgur.com/a/shuyIja
I don't have the cable that goes between the keyboard and the base unit. It's got BT phone plugs on, but they have a small section milled off the plug to stop you accidentally plugging the phone line into the keyboard port. I am going to mill it at work tomorrow and then I should be able to power it up and see what happens!
ErTnEc@reddit (OP)
Oh very nice! I'd be interested on what keyboards it uses too? At least now I know physically what the rest is to look out for now!
As for the cable, the boxed one I have had this in it (black cable), I think it's a straight cable but not sure, I'll check when I can to confirm and see which pins are likely swapped as id imagine there would at least be tx and Rx lines
https://photos.app.goo.gl/stZf8dw15XLPJ8Tn6
SimonBlack@reddit
At a rough guess, that looks like a newer instance of the older electro-mechanical telex machines like the ASR33. Probably intended as a 'portable terminal'.
The telex machines were quite common terminals for multi-user systems up till about 1980. My very first ASCII computer terminal was indeed a second-hand ASR33. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletype_Model_33
Around 1980 the telex machine were displaced by the quieter more compact CRT terminals like the ADM3A (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADM-3A) or the wyse-50 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Terminal-wyse50.jpg).
These machines all used serial protocols to interface with the computers.
ErTnEc@reddit (OP)
I've a few other machines as it is but this one is a bit of an enigma in that I can't find any information online regarding it, but also that I have no documentation/manual with it. I've a few other teletype/telex machines as it is (Ti Silent 700, Easydata Elf Terminal, Merlin Cheetah Plus to name a few), but this is the only one which seems to have no other info available. Frustratingly I do have another one which is still unused and boxed, but the instructions/docs which would have likely been in the box are not present.
typicalspy@reddit
Well. I sent you a message. I have full manuals for the Merlin Cheetah plus... , might scan them one day, maybe. There is a copy in BT museum in london maybe :)
deleted_by_reddit@reddit
[removed]
ErTnEc@reddit (OP)
Oh very nice! I'd be interested on what keyboards it uses too? At least now I know physically what the rest is to look out for now!
As for the cable, the boxed one I have had this in it (black cable), I think it's a straight 1-1 cable but not sure, I'll check when I can to confirm
https://photos.app.goo.gl/stZf8dw15XLPJ8Tn6
SimonBlack@reddit
Frustratingly I do have another one which is still unused and boxed, but the instructions/docs which would have likely been in the box are not present.
That is extremely frustrating!
Even Google is very reticent about this machine.
nderflow@reddit
No, but I've used a much older model.
RogueGameMonster@reddit
I’ve never even heard of one till now