[GreenKeys] Model 33 TWX with Card Dialer

[John Vendely]

In the early '70s when I was an engineering student at the Indianapolis 
campus of Purdue University, I picked up fer cheep an ex-TWX machine 
just like this one.   I used it to dial in via phone line to the DEC 10 
computers at the university computing center to do computer science and 
engineering homework.  At the time, there were groups of 33ASRs at 
various places on campus for student use, but you had to wait around a 
good while for a terminal to free up.  But we thought we'd died and gone 
to heaven when we no longer had to use keypunch machines, could load 
programs from paper tape, and receive "instant" results.  So I felt 
especially fortunate to have my own machine at home.  The center 
pedestal contained a standard Bell modem, plus a morass of relay logic, 
the details of which I never learned.  The machine was connected 
directly to the phone line (not by acoustic coupler).

The TTYs were eventually replaced with DECwriters, and a few years later 
I gave away the Model 33...

73,

John K9WT

On 2/18/2025 7:38 PM, John Lawson wrote:
>
>   A new find, awaiting restoration – was supposed to have been working 
> X?X years ago – been sitting ever since. I’ve never seen one with a 
> card dialer – though a few hundred years ago, I had a card-dialed 
> telephone set  with this mechanism in it–  (why? because I could. ;}  )
>
> The entire pedestal is full of an enormous ‘lesu’ – I haven’t dug into 
> it all yet –  most likely be a summer project.
>
> I have ordered one of Mike Douglas’ current loop to serial converters 
> for it, and it will probably end up connected to my PiDP11.
>
> I’d be interested to know if anyone is familiar with this particular 
> style of machine….
>
> Cheers
>
> John KB6SCO
>
> Carson City
>
>
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