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.
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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.
Please consider donating your old computer / videogame system to Old-Computers.com or one of our partners.
I have at least two of these TeleVideo TS 806. There are floppy disk and some other docs available. If you have any interest in them you can contact me. I also have CP/M disk and manuals and Dos stuff. One or two boxes of 8" and 6" floppies as well. R
Saturday 28th March 2020
Richard Ratcliffe (United States)
Steven, have a god day for you man. So, i work in a factory end inside we make those computers. I fixed a lot off end a liked so much. HD 10MB ou 15MB, 64kb memory, 360k floppy, etc Sorry about my english. By man.
Thursday 20th June 2019
Franklin Couto (Brasil)
I believe the TeleVideo TS-806/TS-816 actually used RS-422 interfaces to the terminals (~2Mbps). These were sweet machines so long as a rogue client didn''t lock the network... and the ''server'' had a very high parts count and it was ALL critical for proper operation.
Saturday 4th August 2018
Steven
NAME
TS-802
MANUFACTURER
Televideo
TYPE
Professional Computer
ORIGIN
U.S.A.
YEAR
1982
BUILT IN LANGUAGE
None
KEYBOARD
Full_stroke 103 keys with 11 function keys & numeric keypad
CPU
Z80-A
SPEED
4 Mhz.
RAM
64 KB
ROM
Unknown
TEXT MODES
80 columns x 25 lines
GRAPHIC MODES
None
COLORS
Monochrome
SOUND
Beeper
SIZE / WEIGHT
Unknown
I/O PORTS
2 x RS232, high speed port for Televideo expansion cards
