Teletype catching fire [was: technical question]

[Tony Arnold]

On Mon, 2005-05-23 at 13:11 +0200, Vincent Trouilliez wrote:
> > Not so much because of the noise, more because it was difficult to type
> > at any real speed on these things. The old ASR-33 teletype was a
> > mechanical marvel, but the travel on the keys when you pressed them was
> > huge by today's standards, and stiff. Also, the things communicated with
> > the computer at 330 baud, yes just 33 characters per second!
> > 
> > We also had one that caught fire, but that's another story!
> > 
> > Ah, nostalgia! It ain't what it used to be:-)
> 
> Come on, what's the story ?! :o)

It's not that much of a story really. Back in the late 70's I was
working for a team here at the University writing operating systems (the
system was called MUSS and is described in a couple of papers in
Software Practise and Experience, Volume 9, Number 8, August, 1979).

We had a machine whose main interface was one of these ASR-33 teletypes.
These things are highly mechanical and driven by a largish electric
motor.

The nature of the work was such that we did most of our development over
night and to keep the team informed, everything was recorded in a log
book.

I came in one morning when my colleagues had been working through the
night to discover that the teletype had been replaced and there was a
note in the log book saying 'terminal caught fire'. The entry was timed
somewhere near to 5 o'clock in the morning.

It seems that all this night work was just too much for this device, and
the motor burned out creating a deal of smoke and even more worry for my
colleagues.

The teletype got replaced by a VDU (really modern). The problem I then
had was I spent months getting the driver for this VDU to work properly.

So there you have it.

Regards,
Tony.
-- 
Tony Arnold, IT Security Coordinator, University of Manchester,
Manchester Computing, Kilburn Building, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL.
T: +44 (0)161 275 6093, F: +44 (0)870 136 1004, M: +44 (0)773 330 0039
E: tony.arnold at manchester.ac.uk, H: http://www.man.ac.uk/Tony.Arnold