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Wiring A Vintage Teletype To The Internet
An anonymous reader writes "Do you have an old teletype with a 5-bit serial interface sitting around that you've been itching to hook up to the Internet? If so, this article at LinuxDevices.com is just what you've been looking for. Henry Minsky has caught the Mini-ITX motherboard bug big-time, arguing that the tiny, yet full-featured boards can now compete favorably with more traditional embedded platforms." Minsky explains that: "Messages and alerts could be printed to the teletype automatically from remote locations (such as our Yahoo calendar), while a user could send messages and access services such as weather and news headlines from the teletype keyboard."
I'd love to get an old teletype going. Ever since I read Hackers by Stephen Levy, I really really lusted after the old hardware. (The first computer I owned was an Atari 800; alas, I never got to play on a PDP-11 or a teletype, or punch cards on a modified IBM Selectric (or punch cards at all!)). I wonder if maybe some enterprising geeks could set up an 'old computer museum and workshop' so geeks can go and learn of their roots. I'd love to play with a teletype! (I hear the bell on one of those is an actual BELL!)
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Depressingly, although he mentions the rationale for choosing the hardware and software that he did, with links to vendors, he never mentions if the damn thing actually works! Where's the audio of the teletype humming away? The pictures of the latest weather report, pulled off of some website, displayed as printed text?
So you can glance at your spam in hard copy format before you throw it away?
Actually that would probably be a good angle to sue spammers for wasting your resources, given that it's illegal to spam faxes for the same reason.
In other news, this sort of thing is called a PRINTER in 2003. It's typically connected to a COMPUTER which is connected to the internet. It's quite possible to print remotely using Windows, particularly to leave spooky messages on your neighbour's printer over residential cable modem setups that have very very bad security.
I first thought that they managed to run the HTTP server on the actual teletype (something like a mechanical HTTP server!), so I was a little dissapointed to see that they used a modern PC motherboard for doing that.
Still, it would be nice to see if something like Contiki could be used for this beast as well.
I was planing on doing the same, except the teletype I have is much newer (its a DEC) im not sure the model number or anything however.
I was just going to write my own version of lynx that just dumbs the whole page or somthing like that. One idea of mine was to create a "web shell" or somthing as it would be fun.
The teletype I have can go up to 9600 baud, and I have a bay networks remote annex lying around so I thought I could use it.
I have a VT330 as well but its stuffed, oh well I might fix it. A VT220 would be cool, however I cant find one ata cheap enough price.
What i really lack of todays printers is the old typewriter "engraving" effect.
If I use a really "good", eg. linen or hemp, paper I want this effect because it looks nice and old-style (for diplomas and such), and have better archive durability (100y+).
So my question is:
Is there any electronic typewriter suitable for connecting to a computer?
Warning: This sig contains a small bug. ==> *
#### Teletype (tty)
:hc:os:xo:\
:co#72:\
:bl=^G:cr=^M:do=^J:sf=^J:
:bs:hc:os:xo:\
:bl=^G:cr=^M:do=^J:hd=\E9:hu=\E8:le=^H:sf=^J:up=\E 7:
#
# These are the hardcopy Teletypes from before AT&T bought the company,
# clattering electromechanical dinosaurs in Bakelite cases that printed on
# pulpy yellow roll paper. If you remember these you go back a ways.
# Teletype-branded VDTs are listed in the AT&T section.
#
# The earliest UNIXes were designed to use these clunkers; nroff and a few
# other programs still default to emitting codes for the Model 37.
#
tty33|tty35|model 33 or 35 teletype:\
tty37|model 37 teletype:\
And hence the old habit of injecting a kilobyte or two of formfeeds after the break so as to make sure the log printer was out of paper.
A friend, who shall remain nameless (though the setting was actually fairly benign), actually backed up the printer and 'X'-ed over the printout. But that was more for show, reverse feeding is unreliable, better yet to just run the printer out of paper.
A variation was recently used. A company HQ had a paper printer to log access cards as they opened the doors to the building. But, the printer was in a cleaning cupboard on the ground floor. The thief (an insider) just broke into it and took the paper logs with him as he left with his companions carrying a s*it load of computers.
The moral of that story is that paper is kind of fragile as a log material. Make sure it'll survive the calamity that the original equipment wont, lest you be standing with a long face with neither the equipment/data nor the logs.
Stefan Axelsson
The first time I used a computer was 1971, when I was a student at the University of Michigan. The air Force had just bought them a brand new IBM 360/67 with 1.5 Megs of RAM for $14 Million. You could submit programs in batch mode via punch cards or use the computer in time sharing mode via terminals. Some of the terminals were based on IBM selectrics, and they were pretty sweet. You could type on them as on a regular selectric typewriter. Most of them were teletypes. Model 33 IIRC. The teletypes were nasty. The keys had about a half inch of travel and they had to be pushed down all the way to work, which took considerable force. Touch typing was out of the question. You only used those things for very breif edits.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
I had one of these units in 1976. Best I could determine, the thing hadn't been powered on in 10 years (at that time). The unit was built in the late '40s. It had a large condenser which was used as a spark suppressor (for trans-atlantic cable runs, as best as I knew). I removed it, and wired it to a KIM-1 as a terminal.
Problem was that the motor coils had grease or oil in them, and would start smoking if the unit was on too long. I junked the unit after a few years (wish that I had held on to it now).
Everything was mechanical (a series of combs activated by 60hz from the line to decode the baudot code. 2 stop bits needed to allow time for the combs to reset after a character had been printed).
Now, its 2003 and these things are STILL operational. Wow. That's 50 years after they should have been retired. These days, printer mechanisms seem to wear out in a couple of years.
Note to all the young 'uns. These '15 teletypes used a typewriter-like mechanism, with a comb to allow only one type bar to impact. Speed was 5 characters per second. At 5 bits per character, no lower case characters. There was a figures/letters shift (two reserved characters - no more state than that - remember the decoder is mechanical). '33 mechanism used a type-ball. 10 characters per second, and used ASCII. The '33 also didn't support lower case.
Ratboy
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
Wow...they still make those things!?
:)
My first experience with punch cards was 20 odd years ago, at the University of Illinois. Dad would work in the lab and I'd use the left over punch cards as bookmarks (or chew toys...5 year olds do that sort of thing). My memory is hazy but I also remember the giant dot matrix printers and the audio modems that you put the phone handset into.
A few years ago, I was in the office of one of my comp sci professors and he had this huge box of punch cards. I asked him for some and he gave me 1/4 of the box. I use them as bookmarks still, except that now you can find them in Apache The Definitive Guide and Programming Perl rather than Winnie the Pooh
What is your Slash Rating?
Actually, you can overclock a teletype quite easily. Just change the gearing from the motor. I 'clocked' this one up to 75 baud from the stock 45.5 baud. But that is a factory approved setting. I don't know how fast you can gear it before it explodes though.
Now the DEC VT420 uses RS-232 and works well with getty out-of-the-box, so there's not much work involved in setting it up.
^]:wq!^M