This week, [tech traveler] has a lot of voices in his mind, and most people are worried about his wife’s reaction to his buying other people’s garbage. But we don’t blame him. He bought it at a real estate auction and it was listed as a TV typewriter. From the late 1970s to the early 1980s, the device looked completely homemade. It contains a large number of components, which are obviously hand-made, combined with neat structure and messy wiring.
[tech] recorded most of his tests and explorations to make it work and test. Given its age and structure, it works surprisingly well, although it does need some work to restore its full function. In fact, he bought the equipment three years ago, and now he finally starts to complete the project and make videos.
The terminal has a very strange Molex connector, which lacks a pin matching the SWTP 6800 serial port. A small survey showed that a 6800 computer was also sold in the same real estate sale. The keyboard itself is something you can buy at Radio Shack for a while. We want to know how many of them have been used and how many just sit on the shelf until they are abandoned.
You must want to know the story behind this device and supporting computer. It took a lot of skill to build such a thing. Today, you can easily do similar things with ready-made things. You have to think about whether what you are building today will appear on the next generation of YouTube in 2070. Probably not.
The TV typewriter is definitely a thing, launched by a masterpiece of [don Lancaster]. When you see all the necessary circuits, you will be surprised to think that you can now put a computer into such a thing.