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Old 21st Apr 2017, 3:02 pm   #3
G6Tanuki
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Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: Wiltshire, UK.
Posts: 13,951
Default Re: ASR33 Teletype nostalga question

As stated, there were loads of variants of the "33" - whether RO ASR or KSR. Teletype Corporation/Westrex had a modular approach to the build-sheet and an options-list as long as your arm.

I have memories of running night-shift ops for a small engineering company in 1976/77 - they had an ICL 1901 [well, actually an ICT 1901 it was that old...] running under EXEC and it used an ASR33 as the console. Since many of the command-sequences were repetitive night-after-night I did the obvious and punched up a set of paper-tapes - something the previous ops had neber thought of doing - so could sit back and save finger-time.

After a while you got to be able to foretell the success or failure of a particular job [remember this was all overnight batch-runs - doing stuff like materials-resource planning and stores requsitions] from the chatter of the ASR so could reach for the appropriate 'next stage' tape without needing to actually look at the console-messages in much detail.


There was another KSR33 kept in a locked office at the same company - this was a dialup [hard-wired - can't remember if it used a modem-over-ordinary-phone-lines or was somehow piggy-backed onto the Telex network? It definitely didn't use an acoustic coupler] to "BARIC" - a joint-venture computer-bureau run by Barclays and ICL - that was used to process the likes of payroll and printing out cheques to pay suppliers. These days I guess you'd call this "cloud computing" but I still remember the "three pings" signoff the BARIC '33 used to give on its bell once a day's job load had been submitted and the session disconnected.
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