AT&T Personal Terminal 510a

The 510a is essentially a fancy telephone with a touch screen, a 1200 bps modem, and an optional keyboard. It is designed for use with one or two normal analog (POTS) telephone lines, although another version called the 510d was available for use on Merlin systems.

The 510a has the most bizarre touch screen I've ever encountered. It is a thick, squishy membrane, which distorts the image from the CRT when pressed. Evidently it was not expected to have a long service life, as the User's Guide contains replacement instructions.

The 510a has a one cartridge slot which can accept these cartridges:

"Teach Me" cartridge (supplied with the 510a)
"Directory" cartridge expands the directory by 100 entries
"Security" cartridge adds password security

The 510a contains a Z-80 microprocessor with what appears to be 48 Kbytes of firmware.

Back to my retrocomputing page

Back to my home page

Last updated December 2, 1998

eric@brouhaha.com

check now