EBCDIC (was Re: [GreenKeys] Print Hammers needed...)

[Jim Haynes]

On Sun, 25 May 2008, Don Robert House wrote:
>
> He told me about a Mini-ASR (an ASR without the tape reader) that he once 
> owned that was built for Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code 
> (EBCDIC)
> I am trying to remember if this would be a Model 29 or Model 34.  Perhaps Jim 
> Haynes remembers...
>
This is unknown to me.  Model 29 was basically a six-level Model 28,
which is to say a 64 character set, tho there may have been seven or
eight levels used to transmit it.  It was originally developed, I'm told,
to replace the Model 20 in Teletypesetter service, but nobody wanted
to buy them.  So it then turned up in a BCD coded version that was
supposedly for internal Bell System use only, as Teletype and Bell did
not want to support any one computer company's code to the exclusion
of any other.  I also saw some ASR keyboards, and perhaps there were
printers to go with them, that were in Fieldata code.  This was a code
the military was trying to standardize on and was a precursor to ASCII.

It seems likely that a Model 35 or 37 could be made to do a subset of
EBCDIC, just by arranging the type box and some of the stunt box
parts.

My understanding is that Model 34 was applied to a Model 28 in Model 35
cabinetry - whether any were built I don't know.

It seems farfetched that Teletype would have made an EBCDIC machine,
since the Bell System was so strongly committed to seeing ASCII
succeed in competition with EBCDIC.  But assuming it was easy to do
by typebox rearrangement, I suppose a third party could have done it,
or Teletype could have done it.