American
Econet Terminator
American
Econet Terminator
I bought this Terminator hoping that it was the early Acorn powered terminator. What arrived was what I term the American Econet Terminator, a type I had never heard of before. It is identical in design to the American Econet Clock. In fact, the only difference between the two is the label on the front and the presence of components on the circuit board.
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I was so pleased when this arrived still packaged in its original wrapping. Acorn gear of any kind in its original packaging is fairly rare so this was a very exciting find. |
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For once, the terminator is marked. It says "Econet Terminator" on the front. It is marked "Made in USA (C) 1984 Acorn Computers Corp." and "Part # ACL-003" |
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On the left hand side is the power outlet. The Econet socket is on the right hand side of the box. In fact, in these pictures you can see that the "Econet" and "Power" labels are incorrect. Either the label was stuck on the wrong way round when the Terminator was produced or the lid was put on back to front. I do not think the Terminator has been used before so this "error" must have occurred at manufacture. I put the lid back on the right way round after I reassembled the unit. |
I think this type of terminator is much more versatile than some of the other types available. The later Acorn Terminator Box and the SJ Research Secure Terminator box both require the box to be wired to the main network cable at either end of the network. To expand the network would require ripping out the terminator, adding socket boxes and rewiring the terminator to the end of the network. With this type of Terminator, it can simply be unplugged whilst more socket boxes are added and then plugged back in to the last socket on the net.
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The casing is made out of metal, painted black. It has a very nice feel and look to it. |
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The lid simply unclips from the base. There are no screws on the case of this Terminator. |
This is the circuitry of the Terminator. The circuit board itself is identical to that in the American Econet Clock. The difference is the components present on the board. Here, the integrated circuits and selection links are missing, as well as a couple of resistors and one of the capacitors present on the clock board. Present on the Terminator circuit board are six resistors, four capacitors and a diode.
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This is the Terminator in action with the LED illuminated. Although I bought the unit without a power supply, it seems to run quite happily off a 9V or 12V DC power supply. |
The Terminator appears to work without any problems but apart from the light coming on, it is practically impossible to know whether any terminator is working. If the network is fine then it may be that it would work just as well without terminators. If the network operates unreliably then it could be anything from the file server to the clock to the network cable to the Econet interfaces or the terminator which is causing the problem. The corresponding American Clock appears to work fine so I have no reason to think that the Terminator is not doing its job.
E-mail me if you know anything about this type of Terminator