Has anyone ever had or used a British Telecom Leopard Telex machine?
Posted by ErTnEc@reddit | vintagecomputing | View on Reddit | 13 comments
Posted by ErTnEc@reddit | vintagecomputing | View on Reddit | 13 comments
Effective_War_7871@reddit
Siiiii yo la usaba en los ochenta la compañía en Cementos Anáhuac lo usábamos como medio de comunicación entre la compañía, me siento afortunada de ver sido una de las pocas personas que saben cómo usarla 😊
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