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Hazeltine 1510 Terminal

ColorComputerStore

Experienced Member
Joined
Sep 23, 2017
Messages
194
I just picked up a Hazeltine 1510. 8080, 2K, etc It looks to be in good shape. After I clean it up and inspect the inside, I will give it a go.

I saw a YouTube video and it has a nice way to show text.

I'm thinking to get a wifi modem and connect to it.

Maybe get a null modem cable and connect to a CoCo.

Did anyone use these back in the days?

Any advice?

In the end, after I finish playing with it, I will probably end up selling it.

Carlos
 
Used a 1500 for a few years. Weird terminal--escape sequences use a leadin character of tilde (hex 7E) which is a printable character on most terminals. Attributes take up a space on the display. A keyboard with a not-so-good feel to it. I think the 1510 is a 1500 with an auto form-fill feature.
 
> I think the 1510 is a 1500 with an auto form-fill feature.
You remember well. The keyboard is the same keys as used in the TI and an Atari 8bit
 
Boy they sure are pretty machines though, even if the keyboard is meh.

Some kind of wifi modem is great with them. Saves fooling around plugging/unplugging cables to switch them between host boxen.

I've been making my own wifi-serial boondoggles with an ESP8266 module and a MAX3232. The boondoggles both listen on a port for an incoming connection (ie; using it on the host side of an old Unix server that can't run a TCP/IP stack), and provide a simple command shell for making outgoing connections. I think I am going to try to make an ESP32 version that is backwards compatible though, because the 8266 isn't beefy enough to do SSH, and I'd like to be able to just connect directly to foreign hosts rather than leapfrogging through a host on my own LAN.

The software isn't really pretty enough to publish yet, but I plan to do so once I make it a little better. In particular I want to hack up some kind of termcap code in arduino, so I can translate between terminal protocols on the fly.

Anyway, I am rambling on and on. I blame the curse of the grape! The easiest and most useful way to get up and going might be to grab a cheap raspberry pi (running Devuan GNU/Linux, of course, if I dare shill for it ;D ), a USB-serial dongle, and a null modem gender changer. Then you can just hang it all off the back of your terminal, without having to make long cables or otherwise fart around, and it's all out of the way and tidy. For extra points, run emulators for a variety of period correct systems on the Pi. PDP-8, -11, CP/M, etc. And then when you are done playing with old stuff, you still have a fancy modern Unix machine hanging off the back, that you can use for anything that has a suitable commandline program.

Serial terminals are really really awesome and fun, because it's quite easy to use them with modern Unix machines and actually do real work. There is something very compelling to me about working that way. I hope that you come to enjoy using it, and hold onto it! But if you do decide to get rid of it at some point, well..... I wouldn't mind adding a Hazeltine to my collection. I do not yet have a serial terminal installed in every room of my house yet, after all! :3
 
For me, the Norsk Data/Tandberg 2200 series terminals were pretty much the top of the mark in 1970s serial terminals. The keyboard on the Beehive SuperBee (I think the keyboard was a GRI model) was really nice. We later used Beehive VT220-type terminals, but by that time there were lots of imitators, Televideo, C. Itoh, etc. I think Bill Morrow rebadged an ADM-31 for use with his MD-3 bundle. I think TAB (the outfit that made office furniture, etc. even had their own VT220 terminal.
 
I think Bill Morrow rebadged an ADM-31 for use with his MD-3 bundle.

There's one of those on ebay right now, but no keyboard. :(

What I want most to add to my collection at the moment are an HP2640 and a Tektronix 4014 or similar. And some variety of Data General, just because they look cool.
 
My school had a bunch of these. After punch cards and KSR-33's, the silence, crisp text, and 300 baud (1200 baud in the admin building) speed of the Hazeltine 1500 terminals (and the occasional Hazeltine 2000) seemed like a dream. Nobody cared about the weird escape codes because the VT-100 didn't exist yet.
 
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