Diehl dds1

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The company Diehl who originally built mechanical and then electronic calculating machines like the Combitron, released an electronic text processing system called dds-1 Bitsy at the end of the seventies.

Bitsy is an abbreviation for BIldschirm-Text-SYstem, i.e. screen-oriented text system. The three models dds-1, dds-2 and dds-3 were shortly afterwards marketed as Bitsy-10, Bitsy-20 and Bitsy-30 by Triumph-Adler. Triumph-Adler (TA) acquired the business branch Diehl Daten Systeme (dds) from Diehl.

A remarkable fact of this system is that the circuit boards have the same connectors and fit mechanically in the TI 990 minicomputer. The CPU of that computer is built with TTL ICs whereas the Bitsy-CPU is built with the instruction compatible microprocessor TMS9900. The Bitsy board also has a connector labelled "front panel". The cable of the TI 990 front panel fits on this header connector, and at least the power supply lines also match. Therefore it is quite probable that a TI 990 system was used to develop and test the dds-1.

By the way, TA offered a LAN for their computers, inclusive their electonic typewriters, that allowed to interconnect all devices: "Ergonet", with a data transfer rate of up to 10Mbit/s.

Total view

At the left the daisy wheel printer from Qume (that is very fast and quiet btw.), in the middle the computer, at the right the system software and data disks, as well as some brochures and daisy wheels to adorn the picture.