Texas Instruments 914 terminal keyboard

[XMIT]

Album with all photos here: https://goo.gl/photos/eZgaooPGgRvS6rzBA

Last week, I won an auction for a Texas Instruments 914 keyboard. It was for sale by the Goodwill Computer Works of Austin, TX. I believe that the sale of this item was a by-product of the closure of the Goodwill Computer Museum here in town.

On the Great/Interesting Finds thread, I announced this keyboard and my intentions to buy it. In exchange for not bidding against me, I promised photos. Well, here they are. I hope you're ready, there are thirty-three of them, spread across four posts.

The front of the keyboard. Just the font told me that this might be a Hall effect keyboard. But, there were extremely few photos in the auction.

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Three quarters views. The keyboard is quite tall.

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From the front, you can get just an idea of how tall this keyboard is.

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Up close, looking at seals on the sides. The seals have been previously broken.

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Look at those lovely spherical key caps. They are not sculpted, however, and are very similar to Signature Plastics' SA profile, row 3. I was hoping they would be sculpted. Ah well.

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One of the keys is just that - a key.

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Photos continue below!

[XMIT]

One thing that was not evident from the auction photos was that this keyboard features translucent key tops. Check out these keys on the upper left hand corner of the keyboard.

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I wonder what could be under these key caps? Oh neat - a little light bulb! And, of course, the confirmation that this is a Hall effect board: the telltale MICRO USA text on the key switch.

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One of the keys on the Space bar row had a blocker on it. This is something I've never seen on a Hall board before.

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The RESET key next to it is so hard to press. Like the DUPLICATE key, it uses two stems instead of a stabilizer.

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Now, let's have a look at the back side of the keyboard.

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The label reads:
914 KEYBOARD
PART 943632-1B
SERIAL 2285
Texas Instruments Incorporated
Houston, Texas
Made In U.S.A.

Hmm. Still no clues as to when this keyboard was made, or who made it. Maybe the back side has some clues?

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What is this sticker in the middle?

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Well, it looks like someone was in here on 1999-03-26. That would explain why the seals were torn.

Read on for more photos...

[XMIT]

Let's have a look at the cable. It's a pretty thick cable.

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Looks like an Amphenol 25 pin connector - note the old logo...

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...mated to a Belden 9747 cable.

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There are two bands tied around the cable. This is the first one:

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It reads: "943610-2 / REV-E".

This other one reads "TERM", as in, "plug this end of cable into the terminal".

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Continue on for disassembly photos!

[XMIT]

Alright, time to take it apart. I only managed to get part way before life called.

To begin disassembly, remove the four screws indicated by the red arrows.

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Don't mind the seals, they were already torn.

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The screws come out quite easily. They are stainless, in very good condition.

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The top cover comes off. Some slight maneuvering frees it from the rest of the case.

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The inside of the top case finally gives us the first clue of the age of this keyboard.

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The text reads:
10-21-74
#584
#2

Yup, this keyboard is eleven years and one day older than I am.

Looking at the rear, you can see that there is just a bunch of empty space inside.

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Finally, the build plate of the keyboard assembly itself.

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MICRO SWITCH
Freeport, Illinois, U.S.A.
Cat. List. 102SW11-1
Cust. Part. 943623-1
Ser. No 000416
Date (Yr/Wk) 75/02

So there you have it. A previously unknown Texas Instruments 914 terminal keyboard from early 1975. If anyone has more information about the system to which this keyboard originally connected please let me know! The 2260 / 3270 / DX5 keys earlier are intriguing - was this an IBM 3270 emulator? It almost has the correct layout.

Thanks for reading!

[Engicoder]

Really nice!! I knew I should have been an a-hole and outbid you

[HaaTa]

Nice!

Almost was going to bid on this, then I noticed you were going for it
Any pics of the pcb?

[XMIT]

Really nice!! I knew I should have been an a-hole and outbid you

Maybe next time. There is always this one - ends in 7 hours, Hall effect, sculpted keys.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/111642910150

I'm not bidding on that one. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to - but I already have too many projects in the queue so I must let that one go.

[XMIT]

Nice!

Thanks!

Almost was going to bid on this, then I noticed you were going for it

Well, I appreciate it. This was the "home" board for me - the purchase benefits Goodwill which does a bunch of important work around here.

Any pics of the pcb?

Sorry, none yet. This required more disassembly than I could manage on a weekday morning. Did you see what I said a moment ago about too many projects?

[SL89]

Coolest keyboard ever.

[Chyros]

Pretty damn awesome! Nice outline .

[kebby]

A really beautiful keyboard, hope I'll get to find out more about how it was used.

[XMIT]

Thanks. Still digging. All I know at this point is that TCP/UDP port 211 is reserved for "Texas Instruments 914C/G Terminal" or "914c/g".

Then there is also this Computerworld magazine snippet mentioning a TI 914A video terminal with 2260 and 3270 emulation modes. It cost $3200 in 1975 dollars - just over $14000 adjusted for inflation. It mentions 8K of memory and a 1920 character screen (80*24).

This connected to the TI DXS (Data Exchange System), with prices ranging from $66000 to $250000 in 1975 dollars.

Delightful.

[XMIT]

Another gem. From http://www.ti.com/corp/docs/company/his ... system.htm :

"An important feature of the system was the new Model 914A video terminal that enabled standalone transaction processing or communication to 360/370 host systems."

[seebart]

Awesome in one word XMIT. Congrats. What a gem.

[andrewjoy]

That is indeed awsome. Makes that terminal board i got off you look like a supermarket special £2 board

[Muirium]

Nice one. The Texas logos, manufacture date, and vintage backlight really make it!

[kebby]

Checked in the bitsavers PDF archive and found this brochure for DXS:
http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/www. ... _Apr76.pdf

The Model 914A Video Display Terminal is the basic CRT unit of DXS. The 914A
is an intelligent terminal with its own operating system (down-loaded from the
DXS terminal monitor). Much of the editing of data is done by the terminal.

There's some more information in that about the 3270 mode and pictures of a very similar keyboard but the yellow keys are different color.

[XMIT]

400Mb of local storage in 1975!!! Wow.

I think the keyboard I have may have been from a military system. This is pure speculation based on the olive case, instead of a white/beige case.

[andrewjoy]

wow huuuugee storage for 1975 i dont even want to know what that cost

shows you how far we have come, my home NAS is 16TB unformatted ,12TB RAIDZ-2

[seebart]

With that kind of storage it must have been quite expensive in 1975.

[XMIT]

Well, we know it cost about a million dollars in today's money. See previous post: "prices ranging from $66000 to $250000 in 1975 dollars". The inflation rate is about 4x since then.

[seebart]

Well, we know it cost about a million dollars in today's money. See previous post: "prices ranging from $66000 to $250000 in 1975 dollars". The inflation rate is about 4x since then.

Jeez hardware was expensive back then.

[Muirium]

The personal computing revolution was yet to come. Back then, computers were for corporations and governments. A million bucks here or there hardly mattered.

[seebart]

The personal computing revolution was yet to come. Back then, computers were for corporations and governments. A million bucks here or there hardly mattered.

Right. But even in the 1980's computers were still "expensive". I remember my dad getting us the Amiga 1000. Cost well over a grand if I remember correctly.

Yep:

Introduced on July 23, 1985 during a star-studded gala featuring Andy Warhol and Debbie Harry held at the Vivian Beaumont Theater[6] at Lincoln Center in New York City, machines began shipping in September with a base configuration of 256 KB of RAM at the retail price of US$1,295. A 13-inch (330 mm) analog RGB monitor was available for around US$300, bringing the price of a complete Amiga system to 1,595 USD.

They got Andy Warhol and Debbie Harry for that gig.

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[Muirium]

Don't grumble about the costly past. Just look at the disposable ewaste future we're headed to. A million different options of dirt cheap trash for you to choose! Or even better: for your boss to choose for you.

Well, it was heading that way for real, until a while ago. I'm glad computers got so disrupted by mobile. We were spiralling the shitter around 1990-2010. Quality's making a comeback. In places.

[seebart]

I think we're pretty much in the disposable ewaste future already.

[Muirium]

Put a pre 2007 Nokia next to an iPhone or indeed a Lumia from today. Where did all the bendy plastic go?

At the low end, sure we're still circling our way into the turd singularity. But not everything is as low end as it used to be. Just remembering the state of things around the millennium gives me chills!

[seebart]

True. Now with XMIT's Texas Instruments 914 it's the other way around. Close to nothing gets built like that anymore.

[andrewjoy]

A million different options of dirt cheap trash for you to choose! Or even better: for your boss to choose for you.

Buy cheap buy twice! 2006 macbook still working fine thank you , know friends and family that have and 3-4 laptops in that time.

[XMIT]

I forgot to mention earlier that the case plastics on this keyboard - much like Muirium's Honeywell board - are surprisingly flimsy. The internals are solid, the case is surprisingly flexy.

Inside and out, beam spring keyboards are the most robust I've seen.