CatChat: AWA VTE-6 Terminal
Click here or on the image to view this entry in our collection.
Description:
AWA VTE-6 Serial Terminal
Serial # 5352
Switch to select serial speeds (300, 1200, 4800 bps)
Power cord missing (chopped off)
Click here or on the image to view this entry in our collection.
Yep, serviced these beasties in the late 80es through to mid 90es.
I have been keeping an eye out for one for my personal collection, but it is good to see most of one is safe.
Interestingly I have found a Thesis by someone called Anthony Wyatt that describes the AWA GTP-6 Processor used in the VTE-6
https://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/bitstreams/f99f081a-175c-4d3c-8caf-f31f942fd120/download
- From page 18 2.2.l History:
"The system CPU, memory and video display were
originally designed for a video terminal, the AWA model
VTE-6 (2). In 1973, when the machine was designed,
commercially available microprocessors (e.g. the INTEL
8080 (3)) were inadequate for the demanding application of
an intelligent editing terminal with communications
protocols, daisy-chain arbitration and contentions.
local printer
The video terminal was designed by AWA engineers
(including the author), and built in large numbers at AWAâs
North Ryde plant in Sydney.
The CPU was implemented in TTL technology on a 450mm
square motherboard, also housing the serial interfaces for
terminal and local printer communications.
Two bus connectors were provided for a character
generator board and a memory board including the terminal
ROM and RAM. A third bus connector for an optional device
was not fitted. While the connector for the character
generator board was dedicated, the other two were general
purpose bus connectors.
The character generator board used a dedicated DMA
channel in the CPU to generate a 24-line by 80-character
display of the 96-character ASCII character set.
The memory board contained 4k bytes of RAM, 9 bits
wide. The ninth bit was originally used for display
attributes (flash) in the video terminal. Again, in the
original terminal, 4k bytes of ROM were fitted, containing
the resident terminal software. Both RAM and ROM had
selectable memory addresses, selected by wire links on the
memory board."
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Great youâve used this link back in the way itâs intended! Great info!
If youâd ever like to help us put the AWA back together and restore it, reach out!
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Just trying to chase up a chap in Melbourne who said he had a Service manual for these beasties, my one regret back when Telstra restructured Telegraphs and Data, was that I didnât help myself to the shelf of service manuals we had at Chatswood back in the day.
(Horribly they probably just got binned) I do remember the VTE6 manual had quite a bit of detail in itâŚ
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Alternatively I might try and see if Anthony Wyatt is around, it looks like he at least lived in SydneyâŚ
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Thereâs always a chance we have the manuals. We have 700 odd file boxes of somewhat sorted manuals and documents
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I worked for a place called Bennett Commercial Electronics in Canberra, in the 1980âs. Bennetts were the AWA agents in Canberra and so a lot of their work was looking after VTE6 terminals as most government departments had them. I have a nice article and some photos from the 1983 elections where VTE6s played an important part in the running of the elections at the tally room. Bennetts still exist as far as I know.
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I would be very interested to see those pictures
Oh, canât upload snaps to here? So here is a link to my drop box DropBocks
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I worked for AWA Data Systems for 17 years and was the service manager for their Digital Products which included the VTE-6. I currently belong to the AWA Veterans Association and am looking for a VTE-6 Video terminal to donate to a museum. I do have a Service Manual for the VTE- 6 and I am wondering if anyone knows of one for sale, or donation. It can be complete, parts only, working, or not. Any Help would be appreciated.
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You have the service manual?
that is good news, I was concerned that there might not be any left.
I did find a VTE6 at the Australian Computer museum when I was there, unfortunately we could not locate the keyboard however.
I have been watching out for a VTE6, or an AWA 8602 terminal for a number of years without any successâŚ
I am presuming the museum you refer to is to do with the AWA Veterans Association, can you tell us more about it?
The AWA Veterans Association members were originally retired, or ex employees of AWA, but as the years went by, the criteria were changed to include affiliated companies and AWA Agents.
The problem is AWA has now been defunct for over 30 years and with old age and no new members to join we are facing shutting the organisation down. I would probably have known IT Dinosaur as Bennetts was my Canberra repair agent for many years. I have lent my copy of the VTE-6 manual to the ACMS to photo copy and I have located a keyboard for their terminal in QLD, which I will purchase and donate to the ACMS. They are currently checking if the PSU and Monitor are working. I have also tried to find a VTE-6 for many years with no success until I came across the ACMS site. My intention was to donate the VTE-6 to the Powerhouse Museum if I found one.
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I have a friend John Crighton who worked for AWA Marine electronics for many years, I will have to see if he knows about AWA Veterans association.
I worked for Telecom/Telstra back in the 80es and 90es servicing (amongst other machines) AWA VTE6 and AWA 8602 terminals. I have long regretted not âliberatingâ the VTE6 service manual when they closed us down, as from memory there was lots of good information in there. So I am glad to hear ACMS have a copy to, er, copy - so thank you for that.
On an unrelated, and rather optimistic note, Iâm currently looking for a manual for an AWA G235 VF Oscillator if any of your fellow association members have such a thing?
I designed the 1983 election system for ATN-7 television.
The Department of Industry and Commerce hosted the computer system used by the AEC at the national tally room (I donât remember the mainframe). It used VTE-6 terminals.
The VTE-6 used a synchronous IBM (bisync) protocol which was quite a bit more complicated than an asynchronous RS232 line that we used for our PDP-11 (that we used to drive the TV character generator and on-air talent terminals).
I built a 6809 based microprocessor system to mimic a VTE-6 in order to receive real-time results from the DoIC mainframe.
In the attached picture you see the three DoIC AWA VTE-6 terminals on the left and the ATN-7 DEC VT100s on the right.
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Thanks for sharing this part of Australian history!
@amagni I think we should cut another interview!
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Former AWA repair tech here (1984-1988), I currently have two VTE-6âs (only one keyboard sadly) and will shortly be moving to a house that doesnât have space to keep them.
Condition unknown, they havenât been turned on for 30-odd years.
Free to a good home (can separate), happy to deliver to anywhere in Melbourne, but sending interstate would be up to the receiver.
I also have lots of other gear needing a home (including 2 x AWA Micromax), will post that separately.
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you donât happen to have the service manual for the VTE6 somewhere as well do you?
a chap down your way called Charles Edmonds had one at one stage but last time I asked he was unable to locate itâŚ
trying to organise with someone to pickup (for ACMS)
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Interestingly I have managed to track down Anthony Wyatt, unfortunately he only worked for AWA for a few years between 1972 and 1977 however he did generously answer questions.
I was going to try and turn it into a bit of a narrative about the VTE-6, however for the sake of simplicity I will just paste my questions and his answers here:
Hi Richard,
On Thu, 19 Mar 2026 11:19:51 +1100, you wrote:
Also given I am a Tech rather than historian, I may ask foolish
questions, in which case I apologise.
No question is foolish to an engineer.
You do seem to have some memories of the VTE-6 so I will try and keep
questions relevant to that machine (unless there are other machines you
may remember?).
My memories of the VTE-6 are obviously more recent than those of the VTE-7
(which I think was the original video terminal, although I donât remember
that it was called the VTE-7 at the time).
If you are happy for me to ask questions via email I can continue on, or
if you would prefer a meeting and or a chat I can probably do that if
you still live in/around (deleted for privacy)
Probably email first, then if that is not enough, we can meet somewhere for a
meal and a chat.
I am very aware that this was 50+ years ago, so I understand that I am
asking a lot, however that also means it would be good to get any
information/memories recorded for posterity.
By the way the only reference I have found to a VTE7 is from an
advertisement from The Bulletin dating from 1973 (copy of page attached)
and given that you were there at the time, and that picture in the
advertisement referring to a VTE6 is clearly something else (unless
there was another version of the VTE6 I am not aware of) it may have
been advertising hyperbole?
I donât recognise the machines in the picture, but then I canât remember what
sort of case they were housed in. In the lab, of course, they never had cases
or lids on!
- I also note it claims (as of 1973) 1200 âAustralian designedâ
terminals in service, although the Kleinschmidt to which they refer seem
to have made teleprinters, so possibly these âterminalsâ were not Video
terminals?
I donât know the Kleinschmidt device at all. It may have been supplied by
another department entirely.
When was the VTE-6 developed (Iâm gathering early to mid 70es?)
Firstly, let me describe the previous model, the VTE-7 (although it was not
called that at the time).
The VTE-7
The machine was designed as an intelligent video terminal for one of Whitlamâs
big ventures (MediBank) and we (AWA) had to supply dozens of terminals for
the project. The terminals were connected individually to a central mainframe
and groups of terminals shared a common local printer. I remember that one of
the claimed advantages of our terminals was that they were connected in a
daisy-chain to the common printer and a terminal would have unique access to
the printer until it ceded ownership.
The VTE-7 had no motherboard - it had three big PCBs that plugged into a
backplane. The three PCBs were the CPU, the serial port controller and the
memory/display card. The CPU was 16-bit data, 16-bit address and it was very
much a dedicated instruction set tailored to fast handling of data stored in
âfieldsâ on the display. The basic display (with empty user fields) was
downloaded from the mainframe and the operator would tab between fields and
enter user data into the available fields.
The memory/display PCB had 1k words (!) of stored program and another 1k words
of display data/read-write memory. Not sure about the size of the RW memory,
but I am sure about the 1k words of ROM. My compiled software had to fit into
it.
The communications with the mainframe were conducted at 50 kbps, synchronous
transmission. In the early 1970s with few LSI (large scale integration) chips
about, the hardware occupied a large PCB. Even five years later, a single LSI
chip would do it (we had two such chips in the VTE-6).
I had nothing to do with the hardware design; when I joined the department,
the machine hardware was being debugged and I was given the task of writing
the terminal software. The softie in charge was a PhD, had been hired
specifically for the job and wrote the software in an ALGOL-like language. I
had to compile that (by hand) into assembly language and then assemble it
using an assembler that the softie had also written. That ran on a
time-shared machine that we had to access in batch mode - submit a job, wait
a day and get the output via courier. Together we spent many nights debugging
the software.
The VTE-6
I donât remember the date when we started the VTE-6 project. It would have
been 73-74 at a guess.
The VTE-6 was mostly on a single motherboard about 45 cm square. It was an
8-bit data/16-bit address CPU built in LSI, with two PCBs standing up plugged
into the on-board bus. The two boards were the display board and the memory
board. The display board contained 2 kB of static RAM for the display, which
was 25 rows by 80 chars (text only).
The memory board contained 4 kB of ROM and 4 kB of dynamic RAM for the
terminal software.
What was your role in itâs development?
Firstly I was involved in the processor development, assisting the lead
engineer by writing software to simulate the operation of the
micro-programming of the processor hardware. IIRC (if I remember correctly),
that support software ran on one of our two DEC PDP-11 computers.
I wrote a low-level kernel/supervisor program for the terminal (which later
became my M Eng Sci thesis) . I donât remember being involved in any terminal
software for that machine.
Do you recall the names of who else might have been involved in the
VTE-6 development (lead engineer etc)?
Yes, but without their permission, I would rather not name them. They were all
older than I and may not even be around these days.
Do you know of any âbusiness driverâ for itâs development?
- was it to support another product (mainframe/midrange computer?)
- or demand by a customer (PMG/Telecom?)
The VTE-6 was the replacement for (or the next generation of) the VTE-7 (the
original). I donât remember a target market for it.
Do you recall any technical challenges, or problems that were
encountered during development, or when tooling up for manufacture?
The only real challenge that I recall was the memory chips we used. In those
days the best we could get were 4 k by 1 bit, dynamic RAM. We had to mount 8
such chips (big things with three different voltage supplies) on the memory
board and they all had to be âreadâ or ârefreshedâ every two milliseconds or
they would lose their data. The display memory was made to refresh the
dynamic RAM by doing âdummy readsâ every time it displayed a line of text.
I think the dynamic RAM was about one microsecond cycle time.
The dynamic RAM chips were particularly fussy with regards to board layout,
noise on supply lines, et cetera. There were at least two redesigns of the
memory board, which is how I managed to get a full set of sixteen 4 kB boards
for my machine at home. The boards in my machine had thick copper braid
soldered over several of the PCB tracks, as well as extra bypass capacitors,
and while an engineerâs dream, were quite unsuitable for sale!
was the GTP-6 processor designed specifically for the VTE-6 or was it
also used in other products?
The processor was originally designed for the VTE-6, but was reused in the
betting terminals that AWA built for the Australian Jockey Club/Sydney Turf
Club in about 75-76.
That project consisted of a mainframe (an IBM 370 clone) and a number of
terminals each with two simple screens and a shared ticket printer. I wrote
the software for the terminals and the device driver for the ticket printer.
was the GTP-6 based on an earlier design?
No, it was original. We agonised over the choice of a microprocessor (at the
time, the 4004 was on sale and the 8008 was not yet available). After a lot
of simulation, calculation and discussions, we settled on a new design using
LSI as much as possible.
I am thinking the main PCB must have been a beast to layout and design,
did you have any memories of the folk involved? or memories of any
problems that may have been encountered with the PCB design?
The main PCB/motherboard was a beast, as you say. We had two people in our
team who were working with an external contractor on the layout. We
originally started with a CPU clock speed of about 12 MHz, but the size of
the board and the length of the tracks meant that speed had to be decreased
for stability. The CPU instructions (8-bit) were expanded into a series of
micro-steps for execution by the hardware. That meant that each 8-bit
instruction was expanded into 32 (IIRC) bit micro-steps, and the lengths of
those tracks had to be controlled to prevent skewing and loss of data.
I wrote support software for simulating that process.
The CRT/video modules look like they may have been designed as a generic
module, were these designed specifically for the VTE6, or where they an
off the shelf design?
- if the latter were they made by AWA, or another manufacturer?
They were designed by us in the lab, but built by someone else (donât know
who).
I recall 2 different power supplies for the VTE6; a Linear power supply
as well as a (presumably later) Switch mode power supply, do you recall
any drivers for this change?
- Although I suspect this may possibly have been after your time there.
I designed a power supply for the terminal - it used a conventional 50 Hz
power transformer/rectifier that produced about 40 VDC, followed by a
switching regulator. This was before high voltage transistors and high
frequency power supplies.
You mentioned a linear regulator, but I donât remember it in that context.
Maybe my switched design was a replacement for it (donât remember).
I do remember the shock to the system when I specified a transformer made to
consumer grade standards. We got it made in the Consumer Products section of
AWA (at Ashfield). It took some time to get permission for that âheresyâ.
Engineering Products (EP) does not use CP parts!
Do you have any memories about the case design, was it made in house by
AWA, or outsourced from another manufacturer?
It was designed in our lab, but made outside IIRC.
Thank you for your patience
Nothing compared to yours for reading all of the above! I hope I havenât
invented too much in an attempt to please.
There is another story lurking in the back of my mind, but I canât bring it
into focus. At some stage we had a job producing something (terminals?
software?) for a large Commonwealth Govt contract. The task consisted of
terminal software that had to communicate with some mainframe. As we had no
local expert on the communications protocol, we hired an external contractor
to write terminal software for the job. The communication protocol used a
4-letter acronym that I canât recall (maybe CUDN for Common User Data
Network?). The contractor produced a program that my softie boss and I had to
debug and we had to rewrite virtually the whole thing as it had so many bugs.
I canât remember what it was or what became of it and it may not be relevant
to the VTE-n stories. Maybe the job was abandoned.
cheers
tony
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