Posted on by Jeff G

Sperry Uniscope 100 Terminal Acquired

Happened upon a “barn sale” over the weekend. Lots of junk and almost left empty handed until I found a side room and spotted this…

I had no idea what it was beyond being a very vintage terminal, so I grabbed it.

Turns out its a Sperry/Univac Uniscope 100 terminal, dating all the way back to 1970. While it’s RS-232, supposedly its not “asynchronous” which may mean it has limited functionality (half-duplex), but alas we’ll see (if I get it going).

These were popular back in the day to connect to Univac 1100 mainframes, and I also found the Univac U201 modem it probably paired with.

Either way, today I spent a good chunk of the day tearing it down and cleaning “barn funk” out of it, and it did clean up decently, but it didn’t work. I have neck glow on the tube, but no high voltage. Without a schematic or service manual, it’ll be a pain to figure out.

Anyway here’s a few pics I took while taking it apart and cleaning, unfortunately it got dark and I didn’t clean the plexi bezel yet, so “after” pics are forthcoming.

Where’s the power supply and transformer?
Power supply and monitor chassis?

(Edit: the board with the large resistors is the monitor deflection board; the other is the “regulator/power supply”.

Funky yoke assembly on the tube! Supposedly this unit uses “vector” graphics, similar to the Asteroids arcade game.
Wait, a wide-screen CRT, in 1970?? Also not sure what all the potentiometers do.

(Edit: the far-left potentiometer is volume, the next one over is G2 (contrast?) for the monitor, while the two in the center are focus and G1/brightness.)

Connections on the card cage. Power cable unhooked here.
Scrubbing years of barn-funk off!

Found the transformer! This drops down from the bottom by releasing two screw locks. Note you have to discharge and unhook the anode wire off the tube first! This must be a solid third of the weight.

Even the power cord is interesting!

The “before” of the lid.

I didn’t really get any time to dig into the keyboard, although just the little bit I looked into it, it looks like it need some serious attention, and I really have to take it apart to clean it up good. In looking at some marketing ephemera for the Uniscopes, it seems the keyboard was considered an “optional” item! (It actually bolts to the front of the terminal with 2 thumb screws).

Considering the other items in the area where this was found, it’s likely the previous owner likely used this with the Mapper software from Sperry/Univac (and later Unisys as BIS). Doing some googling for it leads me to believe people who used it tended to really like it!

Other Sperry items and Mapper ephemera were found as well, so stay tuned for most posts!