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Alfaskop




Alfaskop in console mode



Beginning in the late sixties continuing in late nineties there were development of IBM compatible terminal system under the brand Alfaskop. At the beginning the terminals were compatible with the IBM 2260, but the later models were 3270 compaible. The System 41 depicted above were actually an entire system that could either run various terminal emulation software or a be used as a personal computer running UCSD p-System.

The development took placed under many different companies ownership. It started in ITT owned SRT (Standard Radio och Telefon) and then transfered into Stansaab onto Datasaab, which then was bought by Ericsson. Ericsson sold the division to Nokia that sold it to ICL and then it ended up with computer terminal manufacturer Wyse who closed down operation in 1998.

Marketing material




Alfaskop Series 41 technical documents



Alfaskop 3500  


 Alfaskop 3500 Data Terminal System Drawings and Diagrams


Interfacing

A project has been started to try to get the old Alfaskop 4110 terminal running again. This involves a lot of small details since it is not self-contained. The terminal itself is part of a cluster of terminals and in the center there is a cluster controller which is the communication processor and the floppy disk unit. All these members of the cluster communicates with each other using a two-wire bus called SS3. The terminal itself boots from the cluster as well which means without a CP4101 communication controller, a FD 4120 floppy drive and the right software on a diskette the terminal will not do anything.

We had the luck in being able to acquire the CPR4101 and FD4120 unit which is needed. From Dansk DataHistorisk Förening we got a dump of the software diskette which we are able to write to a physical 8 inch diskette. With all this in place and some minor restoration of the power supplies in the units we were to boot the system and start the 3278 emulation.

Alfaskop terminal cluster booting


There is also a project ongoing to document all the technical aspects of the units involved to be able to get an as accurate as possible emulation running in the MAME emulator framework. For more information please see: alfaskop_emu

Currently work is ongoing to connect the CPR4101 synchronous port to the Hercules emulator. We have been successful sending correctly formatted IBM BSC POLL messages to the CPR4101 and is getting a proper respons. Next step is to make a full IBM BSC implementation in a small micro controller and translate the protocol into TN3270 so that a connection to Hercules can be made.