Fun with terminals
Christmas bought me a little present -
It's a HOBS branded, Philips NMS 6302 viewdata terminal. Very dinky and sweet, and working perfectly! This is a pretty late model, built in 1990, compared to most of my other terminals. It says "Made in France" on the bottom, mentions Minitel, and therefore supports Teletel, Teletel Pad X3 and ASCII services too! Pity it's monochrome.. This would however be really cute to have on my desk, were I a high powered executive working in the 1990s...
As you might be able to tell, it's currently viewing the main Prestel Messaging index, page 7a. This is courtesy of my viewdata BBS, which it has given me a bit of incentive to try and get back online. (It's very very flakey at the moment but if you fancy tying it out, there's a single line sometimes-working on 03333 403311.. Key *Prestel# to jump out of the BBS and back in time, at least for a moment... ) I'm intending to re-work this in time, using the better modems and terminal servers to allow internet access too. It is, however, a wonderful trip down memory lane seeing these pages trickling down at 1200bps again!
posted by Rob at
23:11
4 Comments:
Hi Rob,
yours appears to be the only article on the entire web about this piece of hardware. How are you finding it?
I bought one about a decade ago off eBay, when dial up internet was still widespread but never got round to playing with it. I just dug it out to sell it again but it may not be worth it - they only seem to be going for a few quid but seem to be quite highly regarded.
Have you find any practical use? I tried connecting to your BBS but couldn't get through.
Cheers!
Adam
By
Adam Ainsworth, At
8 April 2012 at 23:14
Hi Adam.
Yes, I think there's only me interested in these - I've since acquired another identical unit, and both were uncontested opening bids on eBay, as are most of my viewdata-related purchases... I'd give yours a home though, if you'd be happy to accept a purely nominal sum for it. My budget is unfortunately limited.
As a comms device, it's great. I'd have loved one on my desk 25 years ago. If I can modify one to bring out the serial lines to an external connection, rather than having to use the internal modem, I might even find it a place on the desk today. Linked to a terminal server, I could then use it as a console for accessing the various *nix boxes.
The BBS is indeed down at the moment; another hardware failure on one of the BBC Micros running it. I think you're the first person to try calling, though! I'll try and find some time to sort it soon..
By
Rob, At
8 April 2012 at 23:49
That would be awesome, I'm not really after any money for it; a tenner plus P&P would suffice (I live in London - anywhere near you?)
We should probably carry this conversation on over email, but I don't like posting my address openly on the net - do you have a contact form anywhere?
Cheers!
Adam
By
Adam Ainsworth, At
9 April 2012 at 15:11
Sounds fair, depending on p&p :-) Contact details (and form) are here.
By
Rob, At
9 April 2012 at 15:19
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