This Odd Dumb Terminal Has A Surprise Inside!

My first reaction was “meter bridge” like for a multi-track tape recorder. My German isn’t good enough to read the plump linked document, but it seems like my first reaction is not right, but it’s in the right half-plane. Good find!

Mike O'Dell

Posted this on youtube but in case google eats my link here it is again. Schematics and wiring: https://stromrichter.org/showthread.php?tid=3993

Bill Kerr

Saw this on Ebay, but you win the auction 😄

MVVblog

Hi Fran! Thanks for this video, very strange device. If I had in my hands I would be unable to wait to open it and to try to understand the pinout of the signal in/out DB25 and try to send some data there. I'm able to spend days (and nights!) to try to understand how it works and for what is it for.

what comes to my mind is, i think it has something to do with amount.. 0% to 100% of some kind of signal.

NorSob

nice show fran....cool tech and pretty wiring loom

I think that BobC is on the correct path. It seems to be more of a display device that could monitor any one of 16 event channels. An overlay with the appropriate label would be placed in front of the display.

Michael A Klaene

To me it looks like one of Dr McCoy's diagnosis screens from Star Trek TOS.

David Peaker

Was the 16bit RS232 RS424? Anyone? This is way back the beginning of my IT career! Ahh Fran, you broke it! I'm tellin on ya!

Dr Andy Hill

I have seen a very similar VFD display in the 1980s that was just a rectangular slab that could be hung on the wall (not a display and base like yours). The intent was to augment many round analog and digital meters in a SCADA system with a "quick glance" display. IIRC, the signal was muxed PWM with discrete address pins to say what data was present on the PWM line, with a clock and an address valid strobe. PWM was used because it played well in both the analog and digital domains. As I saw them used, the displays were for technicians and managers, not operators. Each plant had it's own bus configuration, and there were notebooks containing overlays labeled with the engineering units for each data set that were placed on the front of the display, hiding the default 0-to-100 markings. They disappeared seemingly overnight as the IBM PC took over such mundane duties, and I saw none of them after about 1985.

BobC

I'm in awe at that wiring harness. How long would that take to assemble?

Bert Nielson

Ok I want one and the nemo tubes Them Burrows tubes is Neato

William Nimmo

Nipples man o live great thing

William Nimmo

WTF Wow thats cool lets see whats inside thank you

William Nimmo

Looks like it has ECL differential receivers (10125).

Brad Walker

I wonder if it was part of some sort of medical device? It looks like something you would see in a hospital.

Before we got to see the random startup state I was thinking it might be all-analog input!

Kevin Reid