Show Image
(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-udeRhU22cpk/TNrURTKzZyI/AAAAAAAABEk/GfUlYqXOOuo/s1280/DSC_0168.JPG)
Take a look at these pictures of my Nuclear Data terminals (https://picasaweb.google.com/legalize.slc/NuclearDataND812#).
This brings new meaning to the phrase "dumb terminal". The housing includes only the high voltage drive electronics for the CRT and no electronics for processing the keyboard or refreshing the display from memory! The interface to the outside world consists of a parallel ribbon cable sending keyboard data out and a video input for the CRT monitor. I believe the circuitry that generates the video feed is enclosed somewhere in the peripheral boxes for the ND 812 computer, but I have no documentation and haven't reverse engineered the circuits yet.
I originally purchased just the ND 6600 terminal because damn that vintage green keyboard was cool looking. I purchased it from The Black Hole (https://picasaweb.google.com/legalize.slc/TheBlackHole#) and got it home before I realized it was mostly empty. On my next trip down to the Hole, I picked up the remaining Nuclear Data gear that was there: the ND812 computer, peripherals and 3 ND 600 data entry terminals with nuclear instrumentation module (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Instrumentation_Module) slots.
If anyone has information about what kind of data the is returning (parallel ASCII, serial ASCII?) to save me the trouble of reverse engineering it, that would be awesome. Any Nuclear Data 812 information in general would also be appreciated!
I was Product Support Manager for Nuclear Data in the 1970's-80's. The ND6600 terminal was, as you have noted, a shell. It was designed to interface with an ND6600 computer-based multi-channel analyzer system, and was typically used for gamma ray spectroscopy. The ND6600 mca was a rack mounted system consisting of 2-4 LSI-11 microcomputers. One LSI-11 ran the custom-designed MIDAS operating system, specifically optimized for control of high-speed, real-time gamma ray detectors. The other 1, 2, or 3 LSI-11's each ran a single "DAS" (display-and-acquisition) subsystem, which collected and processed the data stream from its dedicated detector. The LSI's, and other custom display and analog-to-digital conversion hardware, ran on a then-state-of-the-art 6 mHz, parallel 32-bit communication bus (the COMBus). The system was capable of processing very high speed real-time data. The ND6600 was capable of running FORTRAN software for data analysis, a real breakthrough for a spectroscopy system at the time.
The ND-812 was a prior generation PDP-8 clone, with a few real-time data tweaks, which powered the ND4400 MCA system, a 1-detector spectroscopy system. The ND4400 system could be programmed in ND-812 assembler (like PDP-8 assembler -- boy was it a challenge!), in a custom interpretive BASIC-like language called NUTRAN, and eventually in FORTRAN (which didn't work very well). I used and programmed the ND-4400 while an employee of the University of Michigan, before I joined Nuclear Data.
The ND600's were not data terminals, but rather each was a stand-alone gamma ray spectroscopy system. Each was powered by an LSI-11. The ND600 had a dedicated, function-oriented keyboard (not ASCII), and was capable only of collecting and doing fairly basic analysis of spectra. The ND600 was a design masterpiece, but a market failure. It was superseded by the ND66 MCA, which used the exact same architecture, but replaced the function keyboard with an ASCII keyboard, and which became the most successful product of its type at least through the end of the 1980's
Hope you find the information useful.