“In my book, reverse-engineering it and hooking it up as an operating keyboard (with onboard display) would be pretty interesting.”
Depending on how the VFD is controlled, maybe you could hack it into a “Steampunk G15″, as a retro take on Logitech’s shiny modern keyboards. Although, granted, Nixie Orange is more in keeping with the style than VFD Green. -shrug- Go for it anyway!

That DOES look like it would fit in a Firefly transport. All it needs is a compression coil…

I hope you post a followup if you get the display to glow.

Keep flying!

I vote for some kind of typesetting machine. Most high end typewriters had good typewriter style keys. I dont think a professional typist of the day would have liked the funny dimpled keys.

With the amount of EPROM that is has, I’m wondering if might be a complete “word processing” system as it is. Or, as they were known in that era, an electronic typewriter. Wasn’t Triumph Adler in the typewriter business in that era?

One question, though, is whether the EPROMs still contain any data. I seem to remember that the data retention life for EPROMs was about 20 years (and, significantly less if kept under fluorescent lights or sunlight [1]).

[1] Trust me on this; I’m the Voice of Experience!

Dave

Cash register? Industrial controller?

But for me, part of the charm of this particular keyboard is that it looks old and bunged up, like it’s already as old as Serenity when Mal bought it. I want to keep the dust off of this and clean the VFD a little bit, but not clean it up much more than that.

Have you heard of Retr0brite? http://retr0bright.wikispaces.com/

I have been looking for something suitable to try it with after learning about it. It seems with the stuff you run across you might like to know about it if you haven’t already seen it.