[sci.electronics] LANIER Terminal

uad1146@dircon.co.uk (Stuart Millington) (06/23/91)

     I have a terminal from an _OLD_ word processor system, 
made by LANIER. I would like to connect it as a second terminal 
to a Commodore AMIGA running MINIX. The two spare terminals 
on the back of the term. are a BNC socket and a 9-way D socket. 
The D-socket does not appear to be a normal serial socket, it 
does not appear to transmit or receive data when hooked up as 
one.[ I tied RTS-CTS, etc.]
     Any help with this would be gratefully accepted. Thanks 
in advance.

BTW - the LANIER system CPU used the BNC socket and a thin co-ax 
type cable to talk to the terminal. I no longer have the CPU 
box, just the terminal.
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bmw@isgtec.uucp (Bruce M. Walker) (06/26/91)

In article <1991Jun23.153334.4344@dircon.co.uk> uad1146@dircon.co.uk (Stuart Millington) writes:
>      I have a terminal from an _OLD_ word processor system, 
> made by LANIER. I would like to connect it as a second terminal 
> to a Commodore AMIGA running MINIX. The two spare terminals 
> on the back of the term. are a BNC socket and a 9-way D socket. 
> [...]
> BTW - the LANIER system CPU used the BNC socket and a thin co-ax 
> type cable to talk to the terminal. I no longer have the CPU 
> box, just the terminal.

That is likely the screen from a C20 (internal project name)
distributed office automation system from AES Data, who sold them in
the US under the Lanier label.

The terminals ran from code in ROM plus some code they downloaded from
the main fileserver (the CPU) over a primitive LAN based on the coax
link.  The CPU is a bitslice design based on the Amd 2901 and was the
kind of design that only government funding and committees could
produce (ie *awful*).

Unfortunately for you, most of the "smarts" was in the CPU and any hope
for async comms left with it :-(

My advice: turn it into an aquarium or something, but don't waste any
more time on it.  You should be able to pick up a good surplus terminal
for a few dollars/pounds from a junk-shop.

--
         "Remember, only *you* can prevent emacs!"
bmw@isgtec.uucp  [ ..uunet!utai!lsuc!isgtec!bmw ]  Bruce Walker