This is a weird post. Another one of those random things I never set out to write. But for some reason I feel the need to document things when there's little solid information online. Seeing anything go down the memory hole depresses me, so the least I can do is keep something alive with what I find.
I was surfing some old TV commercials from the 70s and 80s, as one does.
Eventually I came across this old CKCO Canadian TV station promo from 1983 called "We're Bringing It Home To You" over on the wonderful Retrontario channel on YouTube.
The promo features a quick montage tour of all the hot new technology and crew behind the station you're currently enjoying.
One of the machines that brings you their quality content has a fancy rack focus effect very early in the clip, at the 3 second mark. It's on a keyboard with the label "Datacom 1200" across the top:
Once in a while I get mentally snagged by something like this.
I see a technology from the era I don't recognize and go on a little detour for a half-hour reading about it. (Imagine this behavior spread out over a lifetime and a lot of things about me begin to make a lot of sense.)
Anyway, this time around I couldn't find... well, anything. The entire search engine bandwidth for "Datacom 1200" in 2020 is devoted to a product from a Brazilian company named "Datacom" that sells a family of network hardware. And one of the lines features "1200" in the name.
Hey, it's almost 40 years later. Whatchewgonnado?
Actually, it's only partially true that I didn't find anything. I fibbed a smidge.
In fact, the first search result for "Datacom 1200" is an empty listing on an printer ink company's website. Among the various third-party ink replacements they provide, under their "Other" category, is the "Bell DataCom 1200". 🤔
Ahh! Indeed, searching "Bell DataCom" as a full brand name sent me on a little trip that included this ad from Bell Canada in a mid-October 1974 issue of The Ottawa Journal; presumably* two older models of Datacom, the 500 and 600.
(*I say 'presumably' because the Amiga 500 came out after the Amiga 1000; numerical
superiority is not always an indicator of temporal positioning! 😉)
The Bell Datacom is a line of old school printer terminals from the Bell Canada's "Computer Communications Group".
Pretty much what I expected. No real surprise there.
"The Datacom 500 terminal is a compact, self-contained and quiet unit that allows office personnel to send and receive messages from a remote computer. It is ideally suited for consumer-finance applications and such transactions as journal entries, payment inquiries and file up-dating."
"The Datacom 600 is a buffered keyboard teleprinter. This general purpose unit is useful in a wide variety of applications such as accounting information processing, order entry and invoicing, and inventory control."
One interesting, apparently unrelated thing to note: "For more information, just dial Operator and ask for Zenith 33000."
My first thought: maybe these Bell-branded terminals are actually sourced from a Zenith supplier and rebranded. Zenith, after all, dipped their toe into the computer world for a minute there, around that time.
But here's the thing: do a search for "Zenith 33000". You'll find a lot of old newspapers returning results (from various sites that want you to subscribe to all of them to get access to a single article... good luck on that).
And it's not limited to Bell, or even this line of terminals:
This, however, is a dead end.
"Zenith 33000" is a Zenith number. Turns out this was a system of toll-free calling prior to modern toll-free numbers.
A fun bit of telephony trivia, to be sure, but it's completely unrelated to anything here. 😏
A December 18th issue of Computerworld from 1978 refers to the 1200 model specifically, on it's introduction:
"The Datacom 1200 family of teleprinters has been introduced by the Computer Communications Group (CCG). Available as a receive-only (RO) terminal or equipped with a keyboard, Datacom 1200 prints bidirectionally at a maximum speed of 180 char./sec and produces up to 132 char./line.
Vucom Output
"Supplied by Digital Equipment Corp., the Datacom 1200 receive-only teleprinter can serve as a hard-copy output device for the Vucom 1, 3 and 4 series of CRTs, as a peripheral printer for mini- and microcomputer systems and for remote multicopy printing from a host data base in a stand-alone configuration.
"Rates for the Datacom 1200 in Canada are $2,715 for the RO model, with an additional $150 for the keyboard send-receive version. Filed rental rates, which are subject to regulatory approval, are $146/mo for the RO model, with an additional $7/mo for the KSR unit. Maintenance costs $44/mo.
Supplied by DEC, huh? Now that's interesting. From 1970 to the 80s, the once mighty Digital offered their famous DecWriter series of line terminals.
And I'm gonna call it now: the Bell Datacom 1200 is probably a rebranded DecWriter III.
I can't find anything specifically saying so, but I will make my case, and let you decide!
But here's my smoking gun...
The keyboard of the DecWriter III compared to the corner of the Datacom 1200 we're seeing in the promo spot:
I feel good about this. The evidence is pretty convincing. There's just not any official word I'm finding. Yet.
If you find anything, or know first-hand, hit me on Twitter and I'll update this post.
One super interesting thing about "Bell Datacom" is that it shows up in a LOT of ink supplier listings -- the 1200 model, specifically. In fact, ink listings take up most of the "Bell Datacom 1200" search results on Google.
Even Staples seems to have an atrophied entry for it in their ink category. Guessing there's a lot of copy/pasting of "machines that use ink" among companies, and either the 1200 still gets play today (unlikely considering how little direct information there is on it), or it simply never got culled over the years.
This was a hell of thing to write based on a half second blip.
I just wanted this to be little more than an "I SEE YOU, DATACOM 1200" type post for anyone in the future who might look for it, and be confused by the lack of information. I didn't expect to do a full on bit of research, and even come to a reasonable conclusion about it. Huh.
Until next time. 🍻
(This is a mirror from swtpc.org [archive.org], which itself is a mirror from BYTE Magazine. Minor formatting changes have been introduced.)
BYTE's Audio Cassette Standards Symposium
Written by Manfred and Virgina Peschke
BYTE, Feb 1976, Pages 72 and 73
BYTE Magazine sponsored a symposium on November 7 and 8, 1975 in Kansas City MO regarding the interchange of data on inexpensive consumer quality audio cassette drives.
These drives may be used as one of the mass storage devices in the first generation of personal computers, and will retain importance for some time to come as a means of interchange of software between computer enthusiasts who purchase products of the small systems industry.
In order to promote the growth of the industry, BYTE sought to achieve an industry standard on audio cassette data interchange through a working conference.
We extend our greatest appreciation to the 18 people who worked very hard until late Friday night and Saturday morning to discuss the multitude of problems and solutions associated with digital recording on auto cassettes. The names of the participants are listed in Table 1.
In spite of the short time available, the participants were able to draft a set of provisional standards which seems to promise great reliability and is rather inexpensive to implement; implementations may be entirely in hardware, or may require a mix of software and some minimal hardware.
Considerations were given to the problems of speed variation among recorders and playback equipment, start and stop delays, recording density (or speed) versus reliability, and recording frequencies to avoid interference with the telephone network in case some users plan to transmit the tones of the cassette over the phone lines.
On Saturday afternoon, Mr. Felsenstein and Mr. Mauch volunteered to write up the consensus among the participants as to a provisional standard which has been reproduced below.
Provisional Audio Cassette Data Interchange Standard
The consensus among the participants of the audio cassette standards symposium at Kansas City MO sponsored by BYTE Magazine is as follows:
Table 1: Participants at Audio Cassette Symposium.
Ray Borrill | 1218 Prairie Dr, Bloomington IN |
Hal Chamberlin | The Computer Hobbyist, P 0 Box 5985, Raleigh NC 27607 |
Tom Durston | MITS, 6328 Linn NE, Albuquerque NM |
Lee Felsenstein | LGC Engineering, 1807 Delaware St, Berkeley CA 94703 |
Joe Frappier | Mikra-D, 32 Maple St, Bellingham MA |
Bill Gates | MITS |
Gary Kay | Southwest Technical Products Corp, 219 W Rhapsody, San Antonio TX 78216 |
Bob Marsh | Processor Technology, 2465 Fourth St, Berkeley CA 94710 |
Harold A Mauch | Pronetics, 4021 Windsor, Garland TX 75042 |
Bob Nelson | PCM, San Ramon CA |
George Perrine | HAL Communications Corp, Box 365, Urbana IL 61801 |
Ed Roberts | MITS |
Richard Smith | The Computer Hobbyist, P 0 Box 5882, Raleigh NC 27607 |
Les Solomon | Popular Electronics, 1 Park Av, New York NY 10016 |
Michael Stolowitz | Godbout Electronics, Box 2355, Oakland Airport CA 94614 |
Paul Tucker | HAL Communications Corp |
Mike Wise | Sphere, 791 S 500 W, Bountiful UT 84010 |
Bob Zaller | MITS |