What is this?

[themadhacker]

It's been forever since I've last checked this thread, but I finally got an answer from somebody on the old computers forum.

"dukenukesem View Drop Down
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Joined: 09 April 2010
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Posts: 1 Quote dukenukesem Quote Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09 April 2010 at 10:40pm
I think I can help you out on this. I was the component engineer for Xscribe during the XEC5 days. This means I spec'd all parts and hardware parameters for the computer. It appears that you may only have the "computer" portion of the system. It should be a combo computer/keyboard with 3-1/2" floppy and connectors for the power supply, steno machine, printer and monitor. The whole system was designed solely as a court reporting computer system to be used by stenographers. The monitor was a standalone Roland with black phosphor content (meaning it looked like a typewritten page). Basically the component you have is useless without the rest of the equipment and software listed. You might try listing it on a court reporters website as they are now quite unusual and were really advanced for 1985. It operates under CP/M 2.2 and the software is proprietary. The company was eventually bought out by Stenograph and was allowed to languish. One "funny" thing: The design of the keyboard/computer (a 9-layer PCB with peripherals) was the brainchild of the VP of engineering for asthetics. He was a Porsche nut and deemed that the keyboard should look like the front clip of his Porsche 944. This made for some very entertaining design restrictions. And, yes, the cabling was intentionally designed for use with only Xscribe equipment......therefore it wasn't standard pinouts. In its day it was the best thing going and pretty much the ONLY thing going. But that is now ancient history. BTW: Xscribe = "transcribe".

[eagle5953]

Sucks that it isn't all there, but some good info from the guy.

What's the deal with a 9 layer PCB? I understand that the more layers, the smaller the board can be, but I would have thought you'd hit some diminishing returns on that long before 9.