On Thu, Aug 17, 2000 at 07:28:23PM -0600, Mark Gregory (gregorym_at_cadvision.com) wrote:
> Found something cool in the thrift shop that I've never seen before - a
> Northern Telecom Displayphone (model NT6K00AM), ca. 1984.
Should you decide not to keep it, please let me know. I've been
passively looking for one of those for some time.
> It seems to be an early attempt at computer/telephone integration -
> basically a data terminal integrated with a telephone. There's a very clear,
> legible screen, a full keyboard that hides in the main unit, and really nice
> touch-sensitive controls for the phone functions. On the back are an RS-232C
> port and a parallel port.
>
> Can anybody tell me more about this system, and how they were used?
They never made it a *whole* lot further than a demonstration. The
idea behind them was exactly as you imagine -- various BBS-ish stuff
available online -- think old Compuserve -- plus local stuff like a
memo facility, phone directory (possibly shared throughout an
organization), electronic mail, and so forth. It was just a little too
far out at the time to see much use.
Does yours use regular, home-type phone jacks, or centronics-ish old
Meridian PBX connections?
The only one I ever saw outside of a Northern Telecom booth (no Nortel
back then!) was on the kitchen counter of a friend who worked at
Northern in Belleville, Ontario. She used it as a phone with a big
autodial directory, and to keep track of recipes. :-)
> Web-search using several engines and a dejanews search yielded nothing
> useful. The Nortel Website doesn't even admit this phone ever existed.
Do they admit that "Northern Telecom" existed? :-)
-Rich
--
------------------------------ Rich Lafferty ---------------------------
Sysadmin/Programmer, Instructional and Information Technology Services
Concordia University, Montreal, QC (514) 848-7625
------------------------- rich_at_alcor.concordia.ca ----------------------
Received on Thu Aug 17 2000 - 20:54:46 BST