Kudzu Kid
Member
Hi folks,
I’m very new here. I think this is my 2nd post. Just discovered this site last night. I hope this is the correct forum to post this in.
So I thought I’d see if anyone remembers a certain piece of hardware. If the following looks familiar - my apologies - I also posted it a bit ago on Reddit r/vintagecomputing - but I’m editing this slightly as I think there are some folks here with specific knowledge that may be able to answer a couple questions (see the bottom of the post).
To my posting:
There used to be a company called Intertec Data Systems - late 70's maybe to early 80's - that had an amazing beast called the "SuperTerm" (NOT “SuperBrain” - different animal, same company!). Just curious if anyone else here ever used or serviced one. I had one for a few years. As I recall, it frequently blew some power regulators which in turn caused the print head to hard crash to the home position at warp 8! Like mangle you're fingers for life if you had them in the wrong places at the wrong time. I was adept at soldering / component replacement, but not so much re-engineering PCB 's. :-( As I recall, it was also somewhere finicky on the cleanliness of the AC line feeding it. The whole power supply wasn't horribly tolerant / robust as I recall (fuses and regulators come to mind!).
The SuperTerm was pretty cool and bleeding edge tech. It had a "Gold key" - functions you could program. Programmable / loadable character sets (ASCII, APL, etc.), Bidirectional dot matrix printing (don't know of any other terminal capable of that!), super & sub-scripting and others. When it worked, it was AMAZING, but when it decided to crap, it really hit the ventilating device.
If you want to see some specs / features see a PDF manual I found online. There are a few schematics, tech specs, etc in the manual. Maybe someone with a stronger engineering background could tell me why the regulators were soooo touchy (blowing frequently). Here’s link to a manual: http://vtda.org/docs/computing/IntertecDataSystems/1100500-00_SuperTermMaintenance_1978.pdf
My SuperTerm is long gone, but it was an amazing piece of hardware in its day and would be very cool even today. Several brilliant ideas but slightly weak design.
Just one of my many memories of the era. Still would love to have a Model 33 Teletype, a Hazeltine 2000, Cromemco Z2-D or a Tektronics 4051... (No room here for a UNIVAC 1108 or 1110 or System 360 or 370, and no raised floor, lol) All were great friends of mine "back in the day". I hope this tale sparks a fond memory with folks about their early hardware. Thanks for reading. Glad to be here!
I’m very new here. I think this is my 2nd post. Just discovered this site last night. I hope this is the correct forum to post this in.
So I thought I’d see if anyone remembers a certain piece of hardware. If the following looks familiar - my apologies - I also posted it a bit ago on Reddit r/vintagecomputing - but I’m editing this slightly as I think there are some folks here with specific knowledge that may be able to answer a couple questions (see the bottom of the post).
To my posting:
There used to be a company called Intertec Data Systems - late 70's maybe to early 80's - that had an amazing beast called the "SuperTerm" (NOT “SuperBrain” - different animal, same company!). Just curious if anyone else here ever used or serviced one. I had one for a few years. As I recall, it frequently blew some power regulators which in turn caused the print head to hard crash to the home position at warp 8! Like mangle you're fingers for life if you had them in the wrong places at the wrong time. I was adept at soldering / component replacement, but not so much re-engineering PCB 's. :-( As I recall, it was also somewhere finicky on the cleanliness of the AC line feeding it. The whole power supply wasn't horribly tolerant / robust as I recall (fuses and regulators come to mind!).
The SuperTerm was pretty cool and bleeding edge tech. It had a "Gold key" - functions you could program. Programmable / loadable character sets (ASCII, APL, etc.), Bidirectional dot matrix printing (don't know of any other terminal capable of that!), super & sub-scripting and others. When it worked, it was AMAZING, but when it decided to crap, it really hit the ventilating device.
If you want to see some specs / features see a PDF manual I found online. There are a few schematics, tech specs, etc in the manual. Maybe someone with a stronger engineering background could tell me why the regulators were soooo touchy (blowing frequently). Here’s link to a manual: http://vtda.org/docs/computing/IntertecDataSystems/1100500-00_SuperTermMaintenance_1978.pdf
My SuperTerm is long gone, but it was an amazing piece of hardware in its day and would be very cool even today. Several brilliant ideas but slightly weak design.
Just one of my many memories of the era. Still would love to have a Model 33 Teletype, a Hazeltine 2000, Cromemco Z2-D or a Tektronics 4051... (No room here for a UNIVAC 1108 or 1110 or System 360 or 370, and no raised floor, lol) All were great friends of mine "back in the day". I hope this tale sparks a fond memory with folks about their early hardware. Thanks for reading. Glad to be here!