Strange terminal

[Neal von der Lippe]

A few days ago some men came into my office and installed a peculiar
terminal on my desk. It looks a lot like my other terminal (a Datamedia
DT-80/1-m) except that it has only a twelve-key keyboard, and (get this!)
NO DISPLAY! I can't figure out what to use it for, or what host computers
it can be used to connect to. It has a row of some type of status-indicator
lights at the base of the keyboard. Occaisionally one (sometimes more) of
them blinks, and the terminal's bell (which sounds real obnoxious) rings.
It's not an alarm clock or anything like that, 'cause it doesn't ring at
the same time each day. One of the indicator lights is colored red. It
never comes on. I assume it indicates some very serious error condition.

It has a carrying handle, but it's useless because it's not attached to
the terminal except by a tether about six feet long. I tried dragging
it by the tether, but it was attached to the wall by an even heavier
cable, so it wouldn't come more than a few feet from my desk.

One time when it was ringing I tried to pick it up and the handle
(as usual) came loose. The ringing stopped immediately.

It doesn't have an RS-232 jack, or anything of that sort.

Has anyone seen one of these? Do you know what to do with it? I'm
getting tired of this annoying sporadic ringing. I've been thinking
of just smashing it in with a hammer the next time it does this.
--
Neal von der Lippe
ARPA: neal@maryland
CSNet: neal@umcp-cs
UUCP: {seismo,allegra}!umcp-cs!neal