Okay, I solved two mysteries (sort of) tonight. First, the mysterious b*****a. It was really starting to eat at me trying to figure out who/what they were. I remembered when I won my Mark-8 boards, I immediately got an email from Grant Stockly asking about them. I wondered how he'd knew it was me and he mentioned using some kind of service that can unmask some bidders. So I went to said service, and now I know who they are. Well, I know their ebay ID. I know they sell t-shirts. I don't *think* they're a museum, but hard to tell. I'm not gonna bother them - I just wanted to know who/what I was competing with, that's all.
Second mystery - and the more important one. Al Kossow had the right idea on this mystery terminal. I now know what it is, sort of. As some of you may be aware, the seller 'reposted' the terminal shortly after it sold to b*****a. I assumed b*****a hadn't followed through, but I was wrong. This was a different terminal, and I had an inkling it was because it had a badge on the bottom right I didn't remember seeing on the first one. Anyway, turns out
it's a second terminal this antiques store seller got. Turns out also that the badge was significant, and that this terminal has a tie-in (sort of) to the MCM/70 and later machines, because the guy who helped design it was Mers Kutt, who later brought the MCM/70 into being. And yeah, I bought it. I don't have really any Canadian gear in here. Bout time I did.
That 'TV-9C' on the model tag I thought was a clue was just for the CRT, which Ball Brothers did supply. But it's not a 'Ball Brother's terminal, they just supplied that component of it. There's a few other CRTs by them on ebay. I don't know but I *think* based on date, that it's the Key-Data 100.
There is an ad here for the Series 2 machine, which looks similar... But that ad is dated 1978, and I can see a date code of 1974 on the power supply. Could be an inbetween unit. I'm hoping the serial numbers and such I can't make out from the pic will tell the story. I'm thinking this is the 100. Given it's 1974 it's after Kutt left, but still. Kinda cool to have a piece of Canadian know how, along with the usual story of how our ever useless federal government managed to help screw it all up. Here's hoping another arm of our federal government, also a perennial screw up, Canada Post, doesn't lose it, amidst the strike that's going on. I'm going to try to see if he'll ship it a different way.
I wonder if it'd be possible to use one of those PIDP/8s they have to make it operate. I don't know if it had some kind of special module between it and the PDP-8 or if it communicated directly somehow. You'd also have to find the software I guess. Might be possible given there were 30,000 of them in use at some very large companies.
Anyway, here's the story, taken from Inventing the PC: The MCM/70 Story:
"Historically, punch cards were among the oldest and most prevalent computer input media. Supplying an extended line of hardware to punch, read, and process cards was also a lucrative business for companies such as IBM. However, already, at Honeywell, Kutt had gained a clear idea of how to make computer data entry easier without the need of punch cards. One could simply provide programmers or data entry personnel with a computer terminal consisting primarily of a keyboard and a display. The keyed information could be stored on an external memory medium such as a magnetic drum or magnetic tape. The host computer would then pick up the stored information directly from that external memory, rather than wait for the deck of sorted cards to be punched and fed into it. There were significant advantages to such an arrangement. Before processing, the data keyed in by an operator could be verified, updated, deleted or even sorted and combined with other data already saved in the system's memory. There would be no need fo rexpensive punch card equipment such as card readers, punchers, or sorters. In addition, multiple terminals could be connected to a single host computer. But, as Kutt used to say, "You have to look at the practical side of the development. You cannot build something just because it is neat." He had to wait until the mid-1960s for the Key-Edit system, as he called his first invention, to become an economically sound concept. Then magnetic drums and tapes came down in cost, and Digital Equipment Corporation introduced the PDP-8 mini-computer - a small computer that Kutt needed to control all the operations of the terminals of his data entry system. "My arrangement [with Queen's University] was that I'd be able to set up my own company in parallel," said Kutt, "without jeopardizing my own position in the department. I had already developed the idea of a key-to-drum product and wanted to bring such a product to the marketplace." While at Queen's, Kutt teamed up with Donald Pamenter to form his first company,
Consolidated Comptuer Services Ltd (incorporated in 1969 under the name of
Consolidated Computer Inc.) to develop and manufacture a novel, fully computerized data entry system named the
Key-Edit 100. Multiple data entry terminals of the Key-Edit (called key-stations) were connected to a shared PDP-8 minicomputer which controlled all the data entry and editing functions of the Key-Edit. Almost overnight, CCI became one of the most innovative and internationally recognized Canadian high tech companies of that period. "The biggest thing was to get a big sale," recollected Kutt, "and I used to camp out down at General Motors in Detroit and worked at getting them. We got them and ... from there, the Key-Edit really took off and people knew it around the world." By the end of the 1970s, CCI had installed over 30,000 keystations of its Key-Edit system in twenty-eight countries. Other companies that sound followed CCI with similar key-edit products sold or even rented even more systems. The era of punch cards was over, just like that. The Canadian press called CCI 'Canada's Computer Company' and the symbol of Canada's challenge for a share of the worldwide computer market." By June of 1969, Kutt was out of Queen's and devoting all his time to CCI. That year he was also elected president of the Canadian Information Processing Society. But the satisfaction of having a breakthrough product and getting a taste of managing a successful company did not last long. In the fall of 1971, he was squeezed out of CCI for reasons best explained in a separate publication. (One would have to deal with a vast range of issues, from raising and managing large capital to the incompetence of some top bureaucrats in the Canadian federal government, to name just two.) That year, he was also struck by personal tragedy. A few months before his departure from CCI, he lost his wife to cancer."
