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Can anyone Id these terminals?

josephdaniel

Experienced Member
Joined
Jul 3, 2012
Messages
317
Location
Florence, Texas, United States
Hi, I am talking with a friend who has several terminals that I am interested in buying and there is this Farrington terminal that I cant find anything about. Does anyone know *anything* about this terminal? Is it current loop or RS-232? The year made? I'm pretty she has the keyboard for it too in the the room...

Farrington+front.JPG

Farrington+back.JPG


There is also this that I have no clue what is? I think its some sort of micro computer seeing that it has floppy drives... Anyone have any info about it either?
IMG_8210.JPG


She also has this Wang terminal that I don't know what is either... I assume that it is proprietary to one of their mini computer systems they made... All though on its back it has two ports. One is labeled video and one is labeled keyboard. This almost makes me think that this is just a monitor and a keyboard with nothing inside? I haven't opened it yet but that seems weird to me...

IMG_8242.JPG
 
The top item appears to be a simple terminal from Addressograph-Farrington. Could have been used for POS or other similar uses.

The second one is some sort of microcomputer, but I can't make out the nameplate.

The third one is a Wang VS terminal, interface is Wang-proprietary.
 
Do you know if there is any way to build some sort of dongle that would convert RS-232 to the Wang propitiatory signals?

Would you say that the Farrington could be used as a RS-232 or current loop data terminal? I am guessing that this was used as a data terminal seeing the U.S. Government property sticker on the front... Of course it could have been used at a commissary or the PX but... I guess I answered my own question...
 
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The VS terminal is hard to spec exactly. Some had full microcomputers in them, some "archive" models could even talk to an external 8" disk drive. The problem is that they they all used the same case and keyboard. You have to hand it to Wang--they were very consistent. :)

The top terminal can probably speak RS232C serial I/O, but without at least a manual of some sort, it's going to be hard to say how to use it.

You could probably adapt either of them for use as a monochrome monitor, however.
 
It would be fun to modify that wang maybe with something like the poketerm with a compose out. You could probably modify the keyboard using just the original switches to be ps/2 compatable. Though I would hate destroying an orgional terminal..
You probably could even stick in sone kind of DOS or CP/M emulator in thete and make it an independent machene.
 
The Wang terminal is supposed to attach to an 'archiver'. The archiver was a box with an 8" disk drive and the actual electronics for the terminal and it's host interface. It was connected with a single coax for video signal, and a large parallel cable for the keyboard.
 
So what type of video signal does this thing take? Is it already composite or is it some sort of digital signal?
Im wondering how the keybord outputs data. I sure wish there was information on these suckers available online.
 
Im gonna do some experimentation with the Wang tomorrow and see what type of video input it uses. I suspect its some sort of analog video input but I have no clue about the keyboard connector.
 
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