Tandberg TDV 1243

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Tandberg TDV 1243
Manufacturer Tandberg
Model TDV 1243
Communication
Interfaces RS-232C,
20 mA current loop,
RS-422-A (V.11)
Baud Rates 50 to 38400
Display
Size 14 inch
Refresh Rate 70 Hz
Graphic Modes
Type Monochrome
Resolution 720x454
Firmware
CPU 80188

The Tandberg TDV 1243[1] terminal was produced by Tandberg Data. It had dual personalities - DEC and IBM.

The Tandberg TDV 1243 was developed in Sweden in close cooperation with ABB and Volvo. End users at ABB and Volvo needed to communicate with both DEC PDP/VAX and IBM Mainframe computers. This was done by connecting the terminal to a gateway which in turn was connected to both computers. To switch from DEC to IBM and vice versa the user had to type a CSI (Control Sequence Introducer) command on the keyboard. A CSI command consisted of the characters ESC [ followed by other characters. On a standard VT100 terminal as an example the CSI command for moving the cursor to row 2 column 3 was CSI 2:3 H, that is ESC [ 2:3 H. And then for each IBM command, for example CLEAR, ATTN, SYSREQ, PF 1 - PF 24 different CSI sequences had to be typed by the user. Of course no-one did that, instead they had two terminals on their desk.

The TDV 1243 had a SWITCH CHANNEL (BYT KANAL in Swedish) key that sent the correct CSI command to toggle the connection in the gateway between DEC and IBM. At the same time the status line changed to indicate DEC/IBM connection accordingly. The keyboard was engraved with DEC function keys in black and IBM function keys in green. When in IBM mode, the IBM function keys sent the correct CSI commands to operate the IBM mainframe computer. So the TDV 1243 replaced two terminals with one.

The terminal was delivered with two slightly different keyboard layouts TDV 1243/1 or TDV 1243/2 because ABB and Volvo had different demands. The keyboard layout could be selected in a menu.

The TDV 1243 was built on TDV 1230 DEC VT220 software.

Interfaces

Specifications

Documentation

Images

Keyboard

Pictures of the keyboard.

See also

References