1975 Data Terminal Reverse Engineering; for Sustainability and Repairability
Minor Signals and Embedded Systems
Client company:High Tech Embedded systems - Fontys Lectoraat
Project description
Reverse engineering an existing product can be a difficult task if the needed documentation is not or barely available. An operator can be successful in this when supplied with enough general steps to reverse engineer a product.
The goal of our project is to reverse engineer a data terminal from 1975 that has been collecting dust for about 20+ years! We are doing this for the Fontys lectorate, from which we were given two goals to explore: Sustainability and repairability, we have been tasked with understanding a system that has little to no documentation or records available.
Understanding and appreciating the way things were created before is great and provides a lot of insights to gain a better understanding of why things are done the way they are today.
Context
This project falls within the context of understanding and appreciating reverse engineering tasked to us from within the Lectorate.
Additionally, we work in the context of creating usable and understandable documentation steps that can aid coming groups in their reverse engineering efforts.
Results
The most important outcomes from the project are:
- Documentation that describes the state and different important aspects of the terminal.
- Repairs completed on the logic board to restore basic functionality for the terminal.
- Working text interface using a modern (USB) keyboard that uses a plug and play simulator for the input.
- Proper state recording of the original hardware (Keyboard broken, logic board completed repairs)
About the project group
Our project group consists of four people. We are all following the tech track and are currently taking the minor Signals and Embedded Systems.
We are all between 20 and 24 years old. We greatly enjoy technology and everything related to embedded systems.
