Behind the Scenes of Issue 70

Keyboard Builders' Digest / Editorial

Behind the Scenes of Issue 70

Orion terminal eviscerated, new supporter, new shops added to the vendor database.

dovenyi
Published March 21, 2022

Creators! Feel free to tip me off about your keyboard related projects to bring them to 150K readers.

Hello friends,

I'm still Tamas Dovenyi, this time with Issue #70 of my DIY keyboard focused newsletter and blog dubbed the Keyboard Builders' Digest. If you are new to this, you can read how this started out and what this is all about nowadays. If you like what you see, you can subscribe to the newsletter (free) and donate some bucks to keep this otherwise free and ad-free project alive.

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New acquisitions

As I teased it on Twitter, I bought some vintage keyboards along with an obscure terminal recently. Actually, all of these were bought on local online marketplaces during the past few weeks but for various reasons I wasn't able to pick them up earlier.

Here they are:

Pic:

I was already familiar with the Tatung terminal keyboards (in front and left of the screen), one of those was my first vintage keyboard ever. I bought these only to access the contact details of the seller who regularly lists interesting vintage stuff.

I was also quite familiar with the Datacoop board (leaning against the wall) – this is the fifth one in my collection but each one is slightly different so… :D Nice vintage opticals with huge bevel.

However, I didn't really know anything about the main protagonist in the picture, the Orion terminal and its keyboard (on top).

It popped up on a local auction website and, although barely visible on the photos of the original listing, I fell in love with its connector. :O

Pic:

(This Kontakta / Socapex connector alone would deserve a separate blog entry.)

Anyways, this Orion terminal must be pretty rare since I could find only a single photo of it on the net (other than the the photos of the listing of the one above).

I tried to do my research and here is a quick write-up with some more photos: Orion ADP-2052 terminal.

Just an interesting add-on to that post: this terminal was made for the TPA ("stored program analyzer") by KFKI.

What's TPA you might ask? It was a family of Hungarian computers, the first one being a DEC PDP-8 compatible computer – which was forbidden to be called a computer. Confused?

In the '60s, the Central Committee of the Hungarian communist party ruled that individual developments of computers have to be stopped and computers should be purchased from the Soviet Union.

So instead of computers, KFKI, which was a research institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, continued its project as "stored program analyzer". Which was the same as computers…

The story is somewhat similar to the naming of DEC PDP and why it was called "Programmed Data Processor" instead of computer.

Donations

Thanks Yuan Liu for supporting this project and signing up as a regular donor! Much appreciated!

Keyboard vendor database

New store in New Zealand: Keebord.nz
Hydrakey added.
And IPopularShop too.

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Well, that's it for today.

Thanks for reading and thanks for your support.

Feel free to ask and comment in this issue's r/mk thread, and as always: keep learning and building.

Cheers, Tamás

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Published on Mon 21st Mar 2022. Featured in KBD #70.

Keyboard Builders' Digest / Editorial