TELEVERKET
The TELEVERKET was originally a Philips P5900 text-processing machine that
we received from the ECA in 1985. The ECA had obtained a score of the
machines after a Philips order was canceled, but they had no idea what
to do with them. The plan was that DJOE would figure this out and then
provide schematics for ECA members to build from. The latter part never
happened, however.
The machine originally contained a Z8002 CPU board and a sophisticated
video board; it had space for two Philips X3122 floppy drives which
had of course been removed in the systems given to the ECA.
We built a Z80 CPU board for it and added back the two floppy drives, re-using
the original video board. However, it turned out that the video display
sometimes interfered with the operation of the floppy drives, making
the system somewhat unreliable. We also had to replace the keyboard
because the original had gone missing.
When the ELAN network came along, a LAN controller was added to the machine but
it was never used for anything but testing.
Allard's Computermuseum has a nice set of
pictures of the original Philips Televerket.