[GreenKeys] UT-4 history

[John Beckman]

One of the best things to come out of the RTTY Journal (mentioned here 
recently) was the UT-4. It was comprised of a UART and two FIFOs and 
maybe a dozen other chips. It  was crystal timed, and would allow the 
operator to "type ahead" 80 characters, while receiving. It operated on 
60 wpm, 100wpm and 110 ASCII.  

I built one in the mid 70s using perfboard and wire wrap. I became so 
fascinated with it, that I found a supply of smaller 14 pin dip fifo 
chips and built a huge type ahead buffer that would allow one to  type 
about 3 pages of type while the other guy was sending. At the end of his 
transmission, you hit the "unload" button and sat back and watched the 
rtty flow. If I remember correctly (and that will be a miracle!) it also 
provided an automatic "diddle" (the letters key repeated over and over) 
which kept the other guy's machine running and ready to copy. The diddle 
may have been another project, along with my homemade diode-matrix 
baudot keyboard.

That's what I loved most about RTTY in the days before computers. You 
could actually build "stuff"  with common and cheap TTL chips to make 
your station sound better on the other end.

Thanks for letting me rant about "the good old days." Which, someday, 
these will be. So let's enjoy them.

73
jb W4BTX