Talk:Teletype Model 33

message: The teleprinter article says The 33 ASR was ubiquitous as a console device in the early minicomputer era.
How do you connect a ASR-33 to a minicomputer? --Abdull 06:45, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Usually with a 20mA loop inteface, or was that a trick question :-) MarkMLl 22:42, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Attaching an ASR-33 to a minicomputer

message: The sentence "In the photograph, the two holes appearing on the upper right side of the teletype are for an optional acoustic coupler to an internal modem." is not valid because (A) there are three pictures, rather than one implied by the phrase "the photograph"; and (B) none of the three photos depict an ASR33 with an installed acoustic coupler. In many places, this is called "ironic".
I assume this is just residue of a changeout of photographs. I'll fix the wording when I get a chance. -- Gnoitall (talk) 17:05, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Acoustic Coupler and Photo 

message: File:Teletype Model 33 Terminal April 1974.jpg | April 1974 ad
File:Teletype Model 33 Terminal June 1974.jpg | June 1974 ad
It appears that Teletype referred to their terminal by a variety of names in their 1974 advertisements; "ASR terminal", "model 33" and even "33". The June ad has this sentence: "Some improvements make the 33 more dependable and versatile." The word "model" is always lower case. A survey of books and magazines from the 1970s and 1980s show that "ASR 33" is a very common name. Many books used Teletype in lowercase and as a generic term. Magazines wanted to keep advertisers happy so they were more careful with trademarks. The ads have several reminders that Teletype is a registered trademark. -- SWTPC6800 (talk) 20:24, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Teletype advertisements from 1974 

message: I am deleting the claim that the Model 33's 127 (Delete) key assignment became a de-facto standard. First of all the key is labeled rub out and the code is 177.  More importantly this code usage is build into ASCII by design. Having NULL be all 1's allows any paper tape equipment to erase characters by punching all holes. That's why the NULL character is not with the rest of the control characters in ASCII. Furthermore this practice goes back to Baudot code where the LTRS key punched all five holes, allowing it to be used to delete characters, since repeated LTRS characters were harmless. An operator who caught an error early while punching a tape could backspace the tape and then over punch with the same number of LTRS in 5-level or rub out in ASCII. Note that the Model 33 ASR punch unit has a B.SP button for that purpose (it simply connected to a lever that moved the tape back one unit). --agr (talk) 14:31, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deleted delete 

message: "Another 100,000 were made in the next 18 months, so that No. 600,000 was painted red-white-and-blue and shown around the country during the last part of, and the year after, the Bi-Centennial year."
If this is referring to the US's bi-centennial in 1976, that might be OK if Wikipedia is for Americans only.  I am pretty sure some people in other countries would be interested in this article, and not everyone in the world is familiar with this date, which comes across as sort of Ameri-centric if not entirely obscure.  America is not the only country enjoying electronic innovation, but the reference to its birthday celebration almost makes it sound as if it is the only country that matters w/r/t technology.
Unless someone can demonstrate some very straightforward technical or political connection between the 600,000 teletype machines produced up to that time and the American Bi-Centennial, I move to remove the phrase and replace it with something more generic, like "1976."
Bozonius (talk) 00:40, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: The connection was between the 600,000th machine in particular, not to the machines built prior to that, that machine being 1) the Nth machine built, with N an even multiple of 10^5, and 2) manufactured in the bi-centennial year, that being why it was painted the US's national colors and shown around the US.  I've rewritten that sentence (which was copied-and-pasted from the reference) to note that it was 1976 and say United States Bicentennial and link to said page. Guy Harris (talk) 02:01, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bicentennial Year?   Whose? 

message: I find the use of the word "level" puzzling. It reminds me of rock strata in geological formations, or floors in a building. I assume it refers to the unit which counts the number of possible positions of holes in each row (representing a keystroke, or character) on the paper tape, for which I'd consider "bit", "hole position", or simply "hole" more appropriate. 172.56.27.140 (talk) 13:43, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Level vs. bit

message: I just a wrote an e-mail to the Superintendent of the Palo Alto School District for Wikipedia citations for the first pilot program of the use of computers in education. We deaf kids at Greendell Elementary were connected to Stanford University via acoustic modems (!) to KSR-33 Teletypes which served up rather too rapid spelling and arithmetic lessons, circa very late '60s/early '70s. (I physically broke one of the machines by pressing the "Press to Start" button into the chassis when the system was slow one rainy day. I haven't played the innocent as well since.) Anyway, my father tells me that this was the first usage of computers in education, so I am seeking Wikipedia-worthy citations. kencf0618 (talk) 17:57, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pilot program for the use of computers in education. 

message: At one point the manual claimed that the Model 33 had a mechanical connection between the keyboard and print mechanism and only supports "half-duplex" (local echo) operation.  Both a 1971 manual From Teletype, and an article in Kilobaud Microcomputing about the Model 33, say otherwise.
The 1971 manual from Teletype indicates that the connection is electrical, not mechanical, and that the user can configure the Model 33 either for half-duplex operation or "full-duplex" (remote echo) operation; most of DEC's operating systems expected the latter (allowing them to, for example, echo DEL by printing the characters being deleted, with sequences of deleter characters being printed between "/" and "/", so that typing "F" "R" "O" "G" DEL DEL DEL DEL "P" "R" "I" "N" "C" "E" produced "FROG/GORF/PRINCE"; the BSD tty line discipline also supports this, but prints them between "\" and "/", as do UN*Xes that followed its conventions).  The article from Kilobaud also says that either is available, and indicates how to configure the Model 33 for the desired mode.
A 1963 manual for the Models 32 and 33 says, on page 3-1:
(emphasis mine).  This seems to suggest that remote-echo mode was not an option at that time.
Perhaps the Model 33 originally didn't allow remote-echo mode; that mode wouldn't be useful if a message was being sent from mode teleprinter to another, as the remote teleprinters wouldn't echo the characters back, and the user typing the message wouldn't be able to see what they've typed.  Later popularit of the Model 33 as a computer terminal might have caused Teletype Corporation to make it an option. Guy Harris (talk) 07:06, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Half-duplex-only vs. half-duplex and full-duplex options 

message: Forgive the pun about who got switched on first, but I think it might be interesting to know whether or not the Model 33 actually preceded the Model 32. I haven't seen good sources on that.
In terms of etymology, it would also be interesting to know whether the name of the Model 32 was in any way related to the fact that this Baudot-compatible model basically used a base32-like encoding (if we disregard the figure and letter shift shenanigans). —ReadOnlyAccount (talk) 08:27, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Who's on first?