This is the original Teleram P-1800. It was introduced sometime in the middle to late 1970s. While technically a portable terminal, it had many of the features that make a laptop. Built in Word-processing (Via hard-wired logic), ram storage for text. Mass storage (a Data Cassette drive), and modem capabilities (via an acoustic coupler). OK, a stretch, but this is one of a handful of machines that marked the transition from paper, pencil, and telephone dictation (or messenger), to electronic word processing in the field.

This is the front of the P-1800. On the left is a black & white 7" monitor which displays 43 columns by 14 rows of text. On the right is the Data Cassette. This uses standard sized cassette tapes, but they were specially formatted for the Teleram with indexing information which divided them into blocks. There were no provisions on the unit to format the tapes, nor did we in the tech department have the ability. We had to purchase them from Teleram. In the center is the power switch, Brightness & Contrast controls, and 12 status indicator lights. Below the Tape drive is a 2 digit block counter, and status for read, write, eot, and cassette in place.

This is a close-up view of the side connector panel. Note that besides the AC power cord, it has a provision for a 12volt power cord. There was a full EIA RS-232 output via the DB-25 connector for connection to a modem, or use as a terminal. The small D-style connector was for the acoustic coupler and 300 baud modem. The coupler allowed you to place a telephone handset in it for transmission at 300 baud. The transmissions were one way only., The unit had no provisions for receiving data via modem or RS-232. The small blue connector was for connection to a printer. The knob selected the Baud rate 110 to 1200 baud, and there is a small switch next to it to select parity. The ribbon cable at the bottom goes to the keyboard.

Here is a view looking in from the top. You can see the unit was incredibly packed with electronics. There were four main circuit boards, which you can see on the bottom of this shot. There were a few other smaller boards. One unusual part was the fan, which is plainly visible. Run from a small DC motor, anything heavy set on top of the unit would case the case to hit the fan, stopping it, or making a large racket. This unit has been sitting in the shop for a long time. Note the rust on the screws!

The horizontal board above the monitor is for a Teletypsetter code option that was used for newspaper operations. In the center was the power supply. That round thing is the main filter capacitor.

Most of the bottom of the unit was solid. This hole was below the monitor. Peeking in you can see the CRT tube, and the video board over to the left. At the bottom you can see just a little bit of the 'main stack' of four logic boards. Needless to say, this thing was not the easiest to work on!

Here is the 'stack' of main logic boards as it came out of the unit. The power leads went to 6/32 studs in the center top of each board. Many ribbon cable jumpers using 16 pin DIP plugs connected the different parts. Included here you can also see the TTS option board to the right, and the front status indicator panel on the left. The boards were held together with Nylon spacers, which were then attached to the frame of the unit with screws. Most of the ICs are dated from 1974. The four boards were loosely divided up into Cassette, Memory, Character Generator, and transmission board. A count shows approximately 300+ 74 series TTL chips.

This is a picture of the Transmit (TX) board. It handled all the serial transmissions. Once the send button was pressed, this board would 'take over' ram, and transmit the contents as ASCII characters. The video display was left active during this time, and it did some weird things while the unit was transmitting. The only LSI IC in the entire unit is on this board, in the upper left is a TMS 6011 Uart.

This is the cassette board. It handled all the Cassette drive functions. When a save was called for, it would 'take over' the RAM, and write the contents, cell by cell onto the cassette tape. The operator was responsible for keeping track of what block was what, and manually moving the tape to the correct block. The 2 colored ribbon cables hanging off of this were the cables that went to the tape drive itself.

This is the Character generator board. It is responsible for scanning the RAM regularly, converting the ASCII text to video characters, creating the composite video signal, and sending it to the CRT Monitor board. The only EPROM is located on this board. The White/gold IC at the bottom center, it is a 60720 used as the character EPROM.

This is the Memory board. Sort of the heart of the machine. It has the actual RAM memory, and the supporting address and data buffers and decoders. This is also where the cursor counters are, and where the actual editing of the ram occurs. The main memory is our old friend the 2102 1kx8 static ram. There are 14 of them in the lower right corner ( 2 rows of Light gray). One of them has been replaced with a ceramic/gold replacement chip (bottom left). This makes the memory 2k of 7-bit locations.

Here is the cassette drive. Each spindle is directly driven by a servo motor. Note there is no capstan. The tape has two tracks. One is for data, the other is a timing/servo track. The electronics used the timing signals from that track to regulate the speed of the drive motors. Note the Main tape head (silver, directly in the top center). It had two sections, one for each track. The tape could not be flipped over! Just to the right of the Main head is a standard erase head. This only erased the data track, not the timing track, which was recorded at the factory. In the lower right are two micro switches to sense cassette in, and write protect.

This is a view of the side of the Cassette drive. You can see one of the reel servo motors.