#retrocomputing
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i sort of find it slightly unlikely reading up on the system because I think the company that employed the person pictured would have had trouble paying for a used Toyota
but damn this terminal is some gorgeous retro-futurism
@gloriouscow I was not prepared for how incredible it would be when I went reading into it.
10/10 would pay too much for one on craigslist that I would never be able to make work.
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@gloriouscow I was not prepared for how incredible it would be when I went reading into it.
10/10 would pay too much for one on craigslist that I would never be able to make work.
oh yeah, Seequa definitely did not have this lol
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@DeltaWye @TechTangents "they don't build 'em like that anymore"
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oh yeah, Seequa definitely did not have this lol
@TechTangents If I had a dollar for every time I had to physically check if two vias were so close as to be intentionally connected I'd .. .well I could buy lunch at Arby's
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@gloriouscow I was not prepared for how incredible it would be when I went reading into it.
10/10 would pay too much for one on craigslist that I would never be able to make work.
@TechTangents @gloriouscow 10/10 would watch that series
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@DeltaWye @TechTangents "they don't build 'em like that anymore"
@colinstu @TechTangents That โnotchโ command to route a line around an obstructionโฆ I donโt think AutoCAD has that! I wish it did!
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@TechTangents If I had a dollar for every time I had to physically check if two vias were so close as to be intentionally connected I'd .. .well I could buy lunch at Arby's
curse you for nerd sniping me with this thing which I now have to know everything about
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Anyone recognize the apparatus this woman is using?
I suspect she's at a drafting table, and this is some sort of digitizer based on the corded puck she has in her right hand.
edit: She is doing PCB design work, and timeframe is 1983.
@gloriouscow I do remember our uni had a ~A0 sized digitizer - but I don't remember much detail; I guess that was early 90's when I saw that.
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Anyone recognize the apparatus this woman is using?
I suspect she's at a drafting table, and this is some sort of digitizer based on the corded puck she has in her right hand.
edit: She is doing PCB design work, and timeframe is 1983.
@gloriouscow Looks like Apollo lead programmer Margaret Hamilton at a drafting table.
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@gloriouscow Looks like Apollo lead programmer Margaret Hamilton at a drafting table.
@aachrisg Her name is Mary Duffy and she was an employee of Seequa Computer.
https://archive.org/details/inside-seequa-vol-1-no-3/page/n1/mode/2up
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@gloriouscow
I cannot pin down an exact one because I think these predate the kind of commercial coverage that is better search indexed.But I think this may be a Calma GDS-II system digitizer with some later addition or a calculator sitting on the rail.
But this will be a 70s device that was in the "if you have to ask, you can't afford it" business world for sure.
Source: https://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/calma/Calma_CARDS_Sales_Presentation.pdf
@TechTangents @gloriouscow We have one of those Eclipses in our museum collection:
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Googling for "drafting table digitizer" revealed to me that the drafting table is not actually even dead.
And here I was drooling over CintiQs...
I think I unironically want this thing.
@gloriouscow oh my shit.
This is a dream machine for me.
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@aachrisg Her name is Mary Duffy and she was an employee of Seequa Computer.
https://archive.org/details/inside-seequa-vol-1-no-3/page/n1/mode/2up
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@aachrisg looking at the photo on her Wiki article, it wasn't a bad guess!
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Anyone recognize the apparatus this woman is using?
I suspect she's at a drafting table, and this is some sort of digitizer based on the corded puck she has in her right hand.
edit: She is doing PCB design work, and timeframe is 1983.
@gloriouscow Complete speculation here, but could the thing in her right hand be as simple as a spool of rubylith, tape, or a template? I think at that point in time it was still fairly common to lay out pcbs on paper with graphic artists' tools and then photoreduce them for manufacturing. (No idea what the boxy thing lower down might be though.)
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@gloriouscow Complete speculation here, but could the thing in her right hand be as simple as a spool of rubylith, tape, or a template? I think at that point in time it was still fairly common to lay out pcbs on paper with graphic artists' tools and then photoreduce them for manufacturing. (No idea what the boxy thing lower down might be though.)
@hattifattener Yeah I'm not so sure what she's holding.
The source says she worked on "artwork" for their PCBs, which makes me think think she was working on the silkscreen - something they didn't even print on the first few thousand Chameleon motherboards.
I'm pretty sure that the box is part of a digital drafting machine, which would have slid up and down the central bar, which itself would slide horizontally along the table. The spiral cord is giving the box power at the minimum, which backs up the theory that that was a thing that would slide up and down, as the spiral cord would stretch out to accommodate said movement.
she could really be holding literally anything there, especially if she was asked to hold something irrelevant to her current work just for the photo. You know how that goes.
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@hattifattener Yeah I'm not so sure what she's holding.
The source says she worked on "artwork" for their PCBs, which makes me think think she was working on the silkscreen - something they didn't even print on the first few thousand Chameleon motherboards.
I'm pretty sure that the box is part of a digital drafting machine, which would have slid up and down the central bar, which itself would slide horizontally along the table. The spiral cord is giving the box power at the minimum, which backs up the theory that that was a thing that would slide up and down, as the spiral cord would stretch out to accommodate said movement.
she could really be holding literally anything there, especially if she was asked to hold something irrelevant to her current work just for the photo. You know how that goes.
@gloriouscow Laying out the components and traces for the board would still be described as "producing artwork". I don't know when CAD fully displaced tape+ink, but in 1984 I think it's plausible manual drafting still in use.
The Internet Archive has a copy of Darryl Lindsey's PCB design book from 1982. I can only see the TOC but it describes both manual and then-new CAD techniques. It might have descriptions or photos of equipment you could match to the photo you have.
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Anyone recognize the apparatus this woman is using?
I suspect she's at a drafting table, and this is some sort of digitizer based on the corded puck she has in her right hand.
edit: She is doing PCB design work, and timeframe is 1983.
Okay, I'm wondering if the control panel is actually for a scribe unit.
These were made by Mutoh and designed to attach to drafting table arms...
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Okay, I'm wondering if the control panel is actually for a scribe unit.
These were made by Mutoh and designed to attach to drafting table arms...
Only issue is that I'm going through the catalog and none of the LCDs match, the ones from the early 80's are all too small.
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Okay, I'm wondering if the control panel is actually for a scribe unit.
These were made by Mutoh and designed to attach to drafting table arms...
@gloriouscow I think Iโve seen these, used for lettering on draft plot?