what is this?

[Christof]

<a href="http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3403375066&category=1247">
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3403375066&category=1247 </a>

It has RUP and RDN keys, other fun bits (clear display points to a certian era, as does the range of speed setting on the modem control), but I'm not recognizing anything else about it.

[Emmanuel, Normandy]

Hi Christof,

May be a keyboard from a station?!

Really curious indeed.

Yours.

[Gordon Dyer]

A 1977 date code?

The key style is identical to the HP9836 computer I used to use, but that didnt have the modem controls and I think the 9836 was released in about 1982?

If anyone has an old HP catalog they could look for this keyboard.

[Gordon Dyer]

On second thoughts it must be 1987 to have a 9600 baud modem....

[Wayne Brown]

It's from an HP 2645 terminal, which was used with HP 3000 series minicomputers. This was an intelligent terminal (it had an 8080 microprocessor built in) and could run programs; some models had a built-in cartidge tape drive (hence the tape controls on the keyboard). HP used to distribute tapes with games, like Pong, that could be loaded and run on these terminals. A company called AICS Research used these terminals to build a word processing system that they called "The System 2000 Word Processing Terminal." You can go to http://www.aics-research.com/emulate.html to see a picture of one of these.

The date code should be 1977; the baud rate settings are not for a modem, but for a direct connection to an HP 3000 computer. The "Roll Up" and "Roll Down" keys are for scrolling the screen display up and down.

[Vieira, Luiz C. (Brazil)]

Hi;

I have a 1978 Measurement/Computation Catalogue and in page 588 we can find information about the 264x Interactive Display Terminal Family. The keyboard is detacheable, customizeable and it has many types: 2640C (Cyrilic), N (Danish/Norwegean) ,S and 2645A/S/R (Arabic). The one in the photo seems to be the basic but it is, indeed, this family's kbd.

Cheers.

[Vieira, Luiz C. (Brazil)]

...while I was researching.

Cheers.