T > TELEVIDEO  > TS-802     

TS-802

In 1982, Télévidéo was one of the first companies selling passive video terminals. These devices were used as monitors/keyboards for mainframes. Their major competitor was Digital and its VT100 terminal, which became the reference model and was later on copied by several companies.

The same year, Digital and Televideo had the same idea: to convert their video terminal into a business computer. The digital solution was called the VT-180. Televideo offered their solution under the name TS-802.

The TS-802 was a traditional Z80 and CP/M based system. There were two versions: one equiped with double 5.25'' disk drives, and another with a 10 MB hard disk (TS-802H). Like all CP/M systems manufacturers of the time, Televideo offered a free software suite called TeleSolutions. It included the two MicroPro editor bestsellers: WordStar (wordprocessor) and CalcStar (agenda/spreadsheet).

Initially, these computers were used by large companies as single user, stand alone systems. Then, they were connected to multitasking mainframe units (Televideo TS-806 or TS-816 for example) and used for many years as intelligent satellite stations.

First LAN, by Jim:
Back in 1983, Los Alamos National Laboratory's first Local Area Network was created. It used 1 TS-800A terminal, 7 TS-802 computers and 1 TS-816 Service Processor.