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Tektronix' TEKSCOPE Magazine Introducing the Model 21 and 31 Calculators
TEKSCOPE Magazine, July-August, 1973
This edition of Tektronix' TEKSCOPE magazine is dedicated entirely to the
introduction of Tek's new Model 21
and Model 31 electronic calculators,
which formally occurred on August 2, 1973.
The Tek 21 and 31 calculators were follow-on machines to the
Cintra/Tektronix 909 and
Cintra/Tektronix 911 calculators,
which were acquired as completed products when Tektronix purchased Cintra
in May, 1971. Tektronix produced, sold and supported the 909 and 911
calculators, along with a line of peripheral devices, under the Tektronix
badge until the Model 21 and 31 calculators were introduced, at which time,
the former Cintra calculators were discontinued.
The main logic board of the Tek 21 and 31 calculators is essentially
a re-implementation of the Cintra 909 calculator using a complement
of 15 custom Large Scale Integration(LSI) devices designed by Tektronix
using the architecture of the Cintra calculator. The custom LSI chip set was
fabricated by American Micro-systems (AMI) for Tektronix.
The primary difference
between the Tek 21 and 31 is the "Programmer" board, which in the Tek 21
provides a similar linear "Learn Mode" programming capability provided by
the earlier Cintra 909/911 calculators. The programmer board in the Tek 31
is significantly more complex, providing a much larger memory for storage of
program steps and memory registers, as well as providing a much more
fully-featured set of programming instructions, with conditional and
unconditional branching and subroutine capabilities. A number of additional
features were added along the way, including an optional thermal dot matrix
printer (capable of alphanumerics on the Model 31), and addition of a
magnetic strip (Model 21) or magnetic tape cassette (Model 31) for offline
storage of programs and data.
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