🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Dec10.235708.1@acad.drake.edu> aar001@acad.drake.edu writes:
>Ques:	What the heck is an ADM5?   
>
>INFO: 	I took it apart *grin* and looked inside.  The producion date seems
>     	to be about March 1982, and its board has about 64 chips.  (1 K 
>  	chips I would guess)  And at the top back of the inside is a little
>	switch board with 6 (?) little switches.  and on the right and left
> 	side (inside above keyboard ) are 2 switches that don't seem to 
>	do anything.
>
> Ques:	Anyone know if it can be modified to simulate a VT100 terminal?  

Since all of its functions are implemented in hardware -- and I mean,
in *hardware*, as in the finest Schottky TTL money could buy a decade
ago, this would be a tough job.  You are looking at Lear-Siegler's
followup to the ADM3A, a vintage piece of computing gear so beloved
that it has its own newsgroup, alt.religion.adm3a.  (In fact, you
might try posting your query there, as many ADM3A afficianados
may be found there.)

Count your blessings: you have a terminal that handles lowercase
*without* the necessity of installing the upgrade kit. ;-)
ADM's are also pretty hard to kill; I once bounced one down
a flight of stairs, and it worked just fine afterwards.
They also possess the same flowing, graceful, eye-pleasing
lines as a Volkswagen Beetle, another simplistic low-tech
design which proved remarkably sturdy.

The ADM3A, by the way, has nearly a perfect layout for a Unix keyboard:
no weenie function keys, no silly keypad, no useless caps lock, and no
arrow keys.  What it does have is (1) a handy escape key, just to the
left of "q", (2) a handy control key, just to the left of "a", (3) an
easy to smack ^, in the upper right hand corner, (4) a decent ~,
which is the shift of ^, (5) handy [] and {}, (6) handy _ (right of ;),
and (7) reasonable handling of the rest of the punctuation.
Compare this sensible layout with the unbelievably brain-damaged
default keyboard that Sun ships with Sparc 2's these days.
Unfortunately, the ADM5 terminals deviated from their streamlined
predecessors by moving the control key to an annoying spot and adding
a few useless extra keys.

---Rsk