[GreenKeys] Telephone Men

Fri Nov 29 17:39:32 EST 2013

Quote from Don:

"Most of the IBM, Burroughs, HP, and other representatives I met during my
career could never make a mistake or do anything incorrect.  They always
represented themselves as higher level life-forms than us lowly Teletype and
Data Communications Servicemen."

I worked in the NY Telephone Teletype/Data/Radio repair gang for about
5 years and then moved into an engineering group called
"DATEC" (data technical support). Data communications
exploded in the mid-1970's and all of the "big guns" mentioned
in Don's email were hooking up their computers and modems to
our lines and then blaming "the telephone company" when things
wouldn't work. Ma Bell created the DATEC group to specifically
troubleshoot "customer equipment" issues. We had a great time
showing IBM and Burroughs and others how the RS232 interface
was supposed to work and how their modems didn't meet
specifications for tone levels, noise immunity, RTS/CTS intervals, etc.
While the
typical "telephone man" repairman couldn't do much to solve a
problem due to a non-Bell modem, DATEC had the authority to
substitute a Ma Bell modem to demonstrate how things should
work. 99% of the time our modem would make everything work...
then we'd unhook it, put back the IBM (or whoever) modem
and leave it to the "field engineer from IBM" to figure it out.
The other half of our job was to make sure the expensive
"conditioned" telephone lines met specs...one major problem
was dirty jack fields in Central Offices. They'd cause intermittent
line interruptions whenever a switchman was testing anywhere near
the data circuit jacks. We'd go into a CO, walk up to the jack bays
and pound on the jack panels with our firsts...it was amazing when all of
the
alarms went of!!! A lot of switchman had to work a lot of overtime
cleaning the jacks...HA!

Jack K0TTY

NNNN

-----Original Message-----
From: greenkeys-bounces at mailman.qth.net
[mailto:greenkeys-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Don Robert House
Sent: Friday, November 29, 2013 4:17 PM
To: Jim Haynes
Cc: greenkeys at mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: [GreenKeys] The Model 33 ASR

Jim,

I remember a couple of things about the Model 33 and it's users...

Bell sales sold the "Dataphone Teletype" with a telephone handset mounted on
it's side.
We had several of these "alternate voice machines" so as to not be in
violation with WUTCo.
Had plenty of gray "Trimline" wall phones as nobody else wanted them.  
Most of the people
using these 33s taped the handset to it's base so no one would knock it off
hook.

One was at the Barrington, Illinois High School in the Math classroom.  I
had the privilege of maintaining the machine so all of the students could
write programs for their time shared computer dial-up system.  Most of the
school year was okay but about the middle of May the machine would be so
worn and plastic parts broken that I had to replace the entire machine,
which was less time consuming than repairing everything that was needed. We
let Western Electric decide whether to repair or recycle the machines we
removed from service.

Another problem was the computer folks like to do things backwards from
other industries such as the military. We had to change typewheels so that
the computer folks could have their slash through the letter "O" and the
rest of the world had to have the slash through the number zero "0"  Stands
to reason then that computer folks to this day refer to Teletype machines
backwards: ASR 33 instead of the correct as produced 33 ASR.

Most of the IBM, Burroughs, HP, and other representatives I met during my
career could never make a mistake or do anything incorrect.  They always
represented themselves as higher level life-forms than us lowly Teletype and
Data Communications Servicemen.

Don

On 26 Nov 2013, at 8:51 PM, Jim Haynes wrote:

On Tue, 26 Nov 2013, Teletypeparts wrote:

> 32 Telex were supposed to be throw away machines after so many hours.  
> Maybe it was 500?
>
The original saying I heard was that they were aimed at TWX customers who
would use them for a maximum of 2 hours per day.  Customers with heavier
traffic needs were to get heavy-duty machines.

I've read that the original designs called for felt clutches as in the M15,
but that W.U. pressured Teletype to use Model 28 style all metal clutches.

When the minicomputer industry sprung up the Model 33 ASR was quite a boon
in holding down the cost of an installation.  Previously they had to use
Flexowriters, which I'm told cost in the $5000 range, to get keyboard,
printer and paper tape I/O.  But in minicomputer service the 33s were often
run 24/7.

Also the 32/33 line was originally to have very limited options as part of
holding the cost down.  Later they got sprocket feed and form feed features,
which I'm pretty sure were not intended from the beginning.
Some customer must have had a lot of clout!
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