When I started in the industry in the late ’70s, most new systems were digital dialers with keylocks or some other mechanical devices like a simplex lock. By the mid-’80s, various types of keypads started to emerge and become the norm.
Some of these new keypads just triggered a relay that was connected to a keylock input, and some were just starting to get integrated into the control panel. Many of you might remember the 12-wire keypads back then.
For the most part, programming was done by burning a PROM chip with the various options. And, of course, there were still lots of panels with jumpers and screws used to set things up. Alarm monitoring automation was just starting to be mainstream, with computer systems that looked something like a large refrigerator. At that time, it was all character-based green screen terminals that were used.
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