Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Wiring A Vintage Teletype To The Internet

Posted by simoniker on from the abacus-up-next dept.

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."

24 of 197 comments (clear)

  1. Once again... by CGP314 · · Score: 5, Funny

    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?

    No.

    1. Re:Once again... by Channard · · Score: 3, Funny
      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?

      No.

      You, sir, are hereby expelled from Geek Club due to your blatant failure to own every single piece of obscure or ancient technology ever invented. Hand in your membership badge to the steward and never darken the doors of Slashdot again.

    2. Re:Once again... by hplasm · · Score: 5, Funny
      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? No.

      I'm too busy overclocking my Babbage Engine. More Steam!!

      Blast it! That cooling fan is too large!

      --
      ...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
    3. Re:Once again... by DaveAtFraud · · Score: 3, Funny

      OK. Connecting the teletype to the internet probably violates one of SCO's copyrights. In fact, I'd really believe this since the teletype and their code base are about the same vintage.

      --
      They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
      Ben
  2. Ahh, teletypes. by JessLeah · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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
    1. Re:Ahh, teletypes. by Alien+Being · · Score: 5, Informative

      "I hear the bell on one of those is an actual BELL!"

      The first time I used a teletype machine it was set up as a TWX terminal. You would turn on the paper tape punch and draft a text message using the keyboard and/or input from the tape reader. There was a "Here is" button which would automatically generate the id string of the terminal.

      Once your tape was ready to go, you would dial (really dial) a phone number on the built in telephone and when you got the carrier you would start the tape reader and the message would print out on the remote side. As I recall, there was a control code that would enable the remote tape punch. And yeah, it was a real bell. There was another control code to ring it and it was customary to ring it a few times at the end of the message so the remote operator would know to pick it up.

      It wasn't unusual for the person on the remote end to type in a quick "thanks" before the call ended.

  3. So Minsky... did it work? by silentbozo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:So Minsky... did it work? by hqm · · Score: 5, Interesting
      Yup, works fine. I even had it hooked up as an alarm clock, I had a cron job to print the news and weather at 7:30 AM every morning. In the original military cabinet, it was loud enough to wake people up upstairs, but then I put it into a quieter cabinet, and it was too quiet to wake us up anymore.

      But we use it every day, our Yahoo calendar sends events to it by email (no I won't tell you the address), and we see a printout every morning of the next day's events, easy to tear off and take with you on your way out.

      The original inspiration for this was from Tom Jennings' "World Power Systems" site. Check it out. I used his ASCII-baudot conversion routines.

  4. Not as useful as all that... by dkf · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Given the sort of spam that ends up in my mailbox, hooking the teletype up to print out the subjects of incoming mail messages would require upgrading the teletype to have UNICODE printing characters.

    --
    "Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
  5. Running the HTTP server on the teletype... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  6. ASCII Quake!! by Tim · · Score: 3, Funny

    Hook this bad boy up to a machine running ASCII Quake, and give new meaning to the term "Frag"!

    --
    Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
  7. Once again: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny
    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?

    (nervously) Who sent you?

  8. Re:Why? by javiercero · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Nope this sort of thing is called a TERMINAL, your vtxx0 session is actually trying to emulate the behavior of a paper terminal. Betcha you did not know that :).

    A printer is output only, this device is input and output...

  9. Re:Teletype printouts by gl4ss · · Score: 4, Informative

    better? inkjet????? lcd??

    the whole point of such to-paper logging is to log things so that the alerts can't get destroyed afterwards(because of a hacker, or because the machine has melted) by the computer. and i would presume dot matrix to be a LOT cheaper in the long run than paying for large amounts of ink for inkjets(not to mention the feeding system in inkjets tends to suck for such application).

    and it's not exactly 'like they used to be', they still do it in critical places (or places where some 'hard' proof is needed for logs).

    --
    world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
  10. Actually I do have one by heironymouscoward · · Score: 3, Funny

    A VT220 terminal sitting here in a box, too precious to throw away, too useless to do anything with except perhaps hook up to a Linux box as a useless console.

    And now I can hook it to the Internet! This is seriously useful stuff. Maybe I can make it beep as the text appears, in double size, so that people can see I have a REAL computer!

    --
    Ceci n'est pas une signature
  11. Reliability by Detritus · · Score: 3, Informative
    Old Baudot teletypes, like the models 15 and 19, could run for decades with just occasional preventive maintenance. A typical newspaper newsroom had several teletypes each for the AP and UPI wire services. These would be printing almost continuously, 24 hours a day. They were slow (60 Words Per Minute), but they were built to last forever.

    One of my father's first jobs was as a reporter for UPI. He could "edit" a story by reading the punched holes on the 5-level paper tape.

    --
    Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
  12. From /etc/termcap by Alien+Being · · Score: 4, Interesting

    #### Teletype (tty)
    #
    # 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:\
    :hc:os:xo:\
    :co#72:\
    :bl=^G:cr=^M:do=^J:sf=^J:
    tty37|model 37 teletype:\
    :bs:hc:os:xo:\
    :bl=^G:cr=^M:do=^J:hd=\E9:hu=\E8:le=^H:sf=^J:up=\E 7:

  13. Bell and other sounds ideal for alerts by SgtChaireBourne · · Score: 4, Funny

    The bell is real, but the teletype itself makes so much darn noise that it would be ideal for notification of alerts needing immediate attention. My anecdote us that a friend once hacked one into a being printer for an Apple][. Not only did it make a din during normal operation, because his was missing some structural support it would occilate and bang into the adjacent metal table. Not everyone in the area had the same level of appreciation of this feature however. ;)

    --
    Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
  14. Already done before! by anonymous+coword · · Score: 4, Informative

    Theres a program called heavy metal that allows you to connect your teletype to your box and be able to surf the web, check the weather, stock quotes, telnet into other machines, be able to convert ASCII into 5-bit and and read e-mail.

    --
    Nero-burning ROM for Linux!
  15. Re:Teletype printouts by lars_stefan_axelsson · · Score: 3, Interesting
    the whole point of such to-paper logging is to log things so that the alerts can't get destroyed afterwards(because of a hacker, or because the machine has melted) by the computer.

    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
  16. Telex? by Wansu · · Score: 3, Funny


    I once worked for a company whose business cards had a Telex number on them. At a trade show, I gave a young feller my card. He studied it briefly and pointed to the Telex number at the bottom asking what it was. I said, "That's our Telex number." He looked at me and asked, "What's a Telex?" "It's a Teletype that can store messages", I replied. He seemed to nod, acknowledging my answer but then asked, "What's a Teletype."

    --
    Wansu, th' chinese sailor
  17. Stock tickers by asherh · · Score: 3, Funny
    For that true retro feel you don't need a Teletype, you need a telegraph stock ticker. Lovely things made of brass and wood!

    Of course, inputting commands is rather trickier...

  18. Teletypes by galt2112 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    When I was a radioman in the Navy, our division officer wrote a program to convert between BAUDOT (the 5 digit code used by TTYs) to ASCII and handle the protocol so we could edit messages on a laptop and transfer it to a TTY.

    He showed me the code, written in C.
    That was the moment I fell in love with programming, eventually got out of the navy and studied comp sci.

    Thanks, LCDR Meyers!

  19. Patterns with punched paper tape by jeepliberty · · Score: 5, Funny
    In tuning and calibrating the signal on a radioteletype it is customary to send RYRYR. This presents a pattern on the 5-level punched paper tape like


    1 o.o.o.o
    2 .o.o.o.
    3 o.o.o.o
    4 .o.o.o.
    5 o.o.o.o

    And of course, if you ever get gibberish, you should physically observer the tape for a messages:
    1 ooo...o..ooo..ooo....o...o.ooo
    2 o..o..o...o...o......oo.oo.o
    3 ooo...o...o...oo.....o.o.o.ooo
    4 o..o..o...o...o......o...o.o
    5 ooo...o...o...ooo....o...o.ooo