Some fun photos from Large Scale Systems Museum near Pittsburgh!
This magnificent Enter on both sides of this Singer/Friden minicomputer console.

DEC disk pacs (and some magnetic tapes) everywhere.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RK05

Some very good on/off switches…

…and some very good regular switches, too.

(I liked the whole hierarchy of toggles in that last photo.)

Although the FILE UNSAFE… switch? light maybe? was unexpected.
A strange way to put an LED inside a button.
On the other hand, this is a cool way to choose a font.
This Dasher line famously inspired Severance set design…
…but I have never seen a screen-less printer-terminal like this one!
Speaking of, some more nice keyboards.
Loved this guarded (and hyphenated) RESTART key.
Which one is more scary: a Mac keyboard pretending to be a Space Cadet, or a Kaypro keyboard with an extremely intense overlay?
(Mastodon rate limited me! More in a bit.)
I miss the old terminal proofreading-inspired icons for INSERT and DELETE.
Here: symbols for inverse video, blinking, underlining, and… something?
This is a rare space-saving variant of the famous DEC keyboard that established the inverse T arrow key standard.
All the classic colors of CRTs: amber, white, green, and burn-in.
(Hey computer, read the room.)
For blue, you have to go with IBM blue.
If you looked carefully, you might have spotted this Y2K readiness sticker on the last photo.
Fun tape changing instructions on the device itself.
Not-so-fun instructions from an accounting computer that was used at a funeral home.
Fun arrangement of ports on an IBM computer + a secret inventory # Gorton.
Just a lot of shoddy Gorton all around. 🧡
The future was once now.
@mwichary What do you mean by 'Gorton' in these ?
(As someone from Manchester I'm most used to it as being a pretty grim area of Manchester, but which once housed one of ICL computers sites); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Computers_Limited )
International Computers Limited - Wikipedia

@mwichary you sure this isn’t a Nanoraptor special? 🤣
@mwichary sorry for the fan mail, but, oh holy wah, I am so excited by every one of these photos; nice work; thank you; etc.!
@mwichary this reminds me of Pentium II era HP motherboards when HP had diagonal RAM slots, an motherboards etched with all kinds of fun characters (yes, this is older, but seeing those ports reminded me of those bizarre #HP motherboards).
@mwichary so many great usernames in that list
@mwichary I think @d_j_fitzgerald made reproductions of those for a recent show or conference!
@mwichary I spy DEC BASIC...
@mwichary amber on a crt _feels right_

@mwichary That one twigged some nostalgia: My father worked for Control Data, and some of my earliest clear memories are of him taking me to work, and seeing an animated Snoopy in flying ace gear flying his doghouse across the screen — in ASCII art no less, at first.

Long time ago. <sigh>

(As a bonus, the amber brought to mind my old Hyperion mostly-PC-compatible “portable”, which I still have)

@mwichary ooo, is the green one a vector screen or just a green monochrome
@chrislw Vector!
@mwichary just saw a video on YouTube about vector panels. They used one to make the graphics in WarGames and then used post-processing and filters to make it colored. It was actually a green HP vector display
@mwichary I just see Fast Forward
@mwichary ooh, a very early amiibo key
@mwichary I love those icons. (And the Lamp Test button is curious — what lamp does it test?)
@michaelgemar I think probably all the LEDs on the keyboard and or the screen bezel (where IBM sometimes put them).
@mwichary omg, I’d love to get a board that controls my office.
All of the key caps have to look like Cray lit buttons tho
@mwichary wow ive never seen this. Why would you ever replace this, it's DEL with a *flourish*
@mwichary I miss the days when computer makers made their own keyboards.

@mwichary

Kaypro! My first computer. But I never had a cheat sheet like that. Ah, the good old days.

@mwichary is that blood or rust on the key?
@mwichary I’ll bet the action on these is still great.
@mwichary Can't wait for the next Severance season :)
@mwichary any idea what View/Fault Reset did? seems like a bad idea to combine SysRq with another option
@mwichary Peak design. Modern computers are dull.
@mwichary oh what a gorgeous device
@mwichary that DG dasher colourway is beautiful
@mwichary Hah, I have an old model 33 teletype in the garage, and fond memories of war dialing them when I was a kid ;-)
@mwichary I briefly used a DecWriter III at a course many many years ago. Very cool now. You do need a different way of working than with a glass terminal or you'd waste so much paper.