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MeeGo, Zero To VT320 In Seventeen Seconds

Posted by kdawson on from the old-time-clickety-clack dept.

muirhead writes "Installing MeeGo on an Eee PC 1000 netbook is quick, slick, and easy. The user interface is colorful and stylish with many quirky animations. MeeGo's features are easy to discover and it is fast and responsive. Underneath it all though there is still just a netbook. That means it's got a display screen that has no significant weight behind it. That means typing on an undersized keyboard that has no life. All of these undesirable features can, however, be fixed by adding 9kg (~20lbs) of VT320 video terminal."

33 of 150 comments (clear)

  1. news? by hjf · · Score: 4, Informative

    so this guy hooked up a terminal to a netbook. mad skillz.

    move along people, nothing to see here.

    1. Re:news? by blackpaw · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Not to mention he mistook a DB25 connector for a parallel port.

    2. Re:news? by blackpaw · · Score: 2

      And really, that the netbook is running meego is irrelevant, this can be done with any linux distro.

    3. Re:news? by BenFranske · · Score: 3, Informative

      Mod parent up, it's unfortunate that even reasonably skilled (compared to the general populous) computer users don't know that the type of communication is independent of the physical connector.

    4. Re:news? by BenFranske · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Why is this sad? What's wrong with implementing RS-232 on a 25 pin D-sub connector? In fact for real RS-232 support you need more than 9 pins and the 25 pin connector is really better suited. The fact that 9 pin connectors became the norm for RS-232 on PCs is the part that's more interesting.

    5. Re:news? by quenda · · Score: 4, Informative

      Actually, DB25 was standard for serial. the DB9 serial was an IBM oddity, as was the DB25 instead of Centronics for parallel. I guess it saved them a few bucks.
      However you just had to remember gender, Male DB25 was standard serial, and female was their non-standard parallel connector. Easy :-)

        The nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from. - Andrew S. Tanenbaum

    6. Re:news? by andyn · · Score: 2, Informative

      DB9

      ITYM DE9.

    7. Re:news? by red_dragon · · Score: 3, Informative

      However you just had to remember gender, Male DB25 was standard serial, and female was their non-standard parallel connector. Easy :-)

      But we're talking about RS-232 serial ports here, so in theory:

      • Male: DTE
      • Female: DCE

      But terminals are always DTEs even though they always seem to have a female connector so that the fragile pins are on the easily-replaceable cable; many non-PC computers follow the same logic. And then there are things like Cisco routers which are either DTE or DCE depending on the cable used or how it's attached.

      --
      In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
    8. Re:news? by SnarfQuest · · Score: 2, Informative

      And don't forget DEC's version of the DB9 serial port, which was a bit earlier than IBM's and had a different pinout. So, if you have old DEC equipment with a DB9 that isn't talking to you, you may need a different cable than you expect.

      --
      Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
  2. Sigh, I just threw out my VT320 by wandazulu · · Score: 5, Funny

    I rescued a Vax, complete with a VT320 from the garbage at work and while it all worked, I simply couldn't justify the electrical bill and the noise for a machine that had far less computing power than a Mac mini. So it finally met its end at the loading dock of an electronics recycling center.

    Thinking about the VT320 makes me feel old; I'm sitting in the computer room at the university, with its linoleum floor, coding away on a VT320 logged into an Ultrix machine, with my custom termcap that mapped the function keys to screen sessions, I felt like I was CODING. REAL. SOFTWARE. This was the BIG TIME. Nevermind that even vi slowed to a crawl when someone invoked the compiler. I wouldn't be surprised if the Meego was a slightly better machine than the Ultrix, performance-wise.

    Now get off my...aw, forget it.

    1. Re:Sigh, I just threw out my VT320 by dcavanaugh · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Thinking about your post makes me feel even older. When I was in college the "new" terminals were VT-100. The lab was open 24 hours a day because there weren't enough terminals to go around. For those who knew where to look, there were a few VT-52s hiding in relative obscurity.

      Granted, the VAX had less power than a Mac mini, but it also had reliability that modern systems can't match.

    2. Re:Sigh, I just threw out my VT320 by MichaelSmith · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Granted, the VAX had less power than a Mac mini, but it also had reliability that modern systems can't match.

      In my previous job we ran PDP 11/84s and 11/83s, VAX 11/750s and later various alphas. The PDPs running RSX11M had the greatest feeling of stability I have seen. You could get back to a system after a year and find it in exactly the same state you had left it. The architecture of RSX probably helped. Dynamic memory is discouraged. Many applications are effectively built into the kernel.

      --
      http://michaelsmith.id.au
    3. Re:Sigh, I just threw out my VT320 by wandazulu · · Score: 4, Funny

      Since we're feeling old, what I really miss about "those days" was the "communal" nature of a number of people all using the same machine at once. You were guaranteed that other folks would be logged in, and in pre-IM days a quick "talk" session with someone who knew C better than me solved many a tricky problem.

      Funny enough, I was "talk"-ing with someone I had not ever met face-to-face about how to solve some algorithm or something, and he said it would probably just be easier to write it down on paper. I agreed to meet him, and asked him which lab he was in; turned out he was sitting in the carel right in front of me!

      Good times. Good times.

    4. Re:Sigh, I just threw out my VT320 by lxs · · Score: 4, Funny

      Don't feel old. According to Prince, both VAX and PDP machines are bound to make a comeback next year when the internet is obsolete.

    5. Re:Sigh, I just threw out my VT320 by Linker3000 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Meh,

      My ADM-3a (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADM-3A) mumbles 'get off my lawn' in the general direction of your VT100.

      We had them hooked up to Intel Development systems, Gould SEL mainframes and some box or other than ran CP/M.

      The VT100s (and Wyse 120s) came later with the Vax 11/750.

      Funnily enough, a recycling company picked up some old WY120s from us a couple of weeks ago after we'd brought one of our veterinary clinics into the 21st Century and off an old THEOS multi-user system.

      --
      AT&ROFLMAO
  3. We laugh at your puny VT320 by Animats · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That's not hooking a classic terminal to a netbook. This is hooking a classic terminal to a netbook. (More pictures.)

  4. Uses Lego Mindstorm by ojintoad · · Score: 4, Funny

    Connecting the video terminal to the netbook was fairly straight forward. Starting from the VT320 video terminal I used a Parallel to Serial Port converter plugged into the RS232 cable from a Lego Mindstorms set. The other end of Lego cable was plugged into a RS232 to USB adapter connected my netbook. (You could go straight for a Parallel to USB adapter cable, but I personally would not want to miss out on some excellent Lego.)

    What a blockhead.

  5. How about some graphics... by Zanthrox · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'll be impressed when I see a VT330 or VT340 showing a graphical web browser -- heck, you could go back as far as a VT125 to get monochrome graphics...Not that sending bitmaps over serial would be fun, but modern vector graphics might be..altered..to something ReGIS compatible. That'd be a cool hack.

    Neat to see a VT320 going again though, anyway -- been ages since I've seen one fired up.

  6. Um, any Linux distro? by Darkness404 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The pleasant surprise for me is that it was so simple to set up a thirty year old video terminal on a modern light weight host system. MeeGo has not forgotten its Unix heritage.

    Um, doesn't -every- Linux distro include this? I don't know of a single Linux distro with the exception of perhaps DSL and some embedded distros that wouldn't include basic command line tools. What do you expect with a Linux distro? That because your running Ubuntu all it does is boot a version of Windows XP in emulation via the Linux kernel?

    --
    Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
  7. Terminals on an Apple IIGS by cbdougla · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I remember borrowing an old Wyse terminal from work and hooking it up to my Apple IIGS running GNO/ME (GNO Multitasking Environment. Check here: http://www.hypermall.com/companies/procyon/gnome.html).

    It's kind of cool that all this still works in current-day Linux. There's not many dumb terminals around any more for sure unless you're using an IBM Mainframe I guess. I suspect they still use 3270's.

    1. Re:Terminals on an Apple IIGS by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There's not many dumb terminals around any more for sure

      The dumb terminals are the users these days, as demonstrated by this guy watkin5 who thinks it's such an incredible discovery that a Linux distro can handle a VT320 that he has to write an article about it (complete with a confusion between parallel and serial port DB25s that screams "I don't know what the heck I'm talking about but I'll talk about it anyway"), this other guy muirhead who think it's worthy of a Slashdot story and submits it, and kdawson who accepts the story.

      I guess in 15/20 years, we'll have a story on how Linux can still run keyboards and mice equipped with a PS2 plug originally invented by Sony...

      --
      "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
    2. Re:Terminals on an Apple IIGS by lars_stefan_axelsson · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There's not many dumb terminals around any more for sure unless you're using an IBM Mainframe I guess. I suspect they still use 3270's.

      I guess I'm going to show my age here, but to me a VT320 is very far from a dumb terminal, having used a real glass tty (i.e. terminal that couldn't do e.g. cursor addressing, or even backspace).

      And the 3270 in particular is about as smart as a terminal ever got. The terminal itself did the input field text editing before shipping the whole screen input back to the mainframe. Even though there aren't many actual terminals around you'll still see them emulated on PCs in quite a number of applications.

      --
      Stefan Axelsson
  8. Re:Meh. Did that with an hp48 by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 4, Funny

    So did you type

    -9
    [ENTER]
    process-name
    [ENTER]
    killall
    [ENTER]

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
  9. I log into machines over RS-232 daily. by mirix · · Score: 2, Interesting

    getty ain't going to be losing serial support anytime soon.

    But yes, serial console is awesome. Although not awesome enough to write an article about.

    People really need to learn that "D" subminiature connectors are not inherently serial or parallel. A DB-25 with RS-232 on it is still RS-232. Nothing parallel about it, apart from the fact that a lot of printer cards used the same connector.

    --
    Sent from my PDP-11
  10. Bah. by oddaddresstrap · · Score: 2, Funny

    A VT-100 should be plenty for anyone.

  11. Re:I'd just like to interject. by blackpaw · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What you're referring to as Linux,

    Actually no, what I'm referring to is distro's as is quite clearly stated in my post in an attempt to forestall kneejerk Stallman pedantry. Obviously I failed.

  12. Uh, yea... by HaeMaker · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Guy calls a 25pin serial port "parallel" and is impressing us with is mad skillz using lego to "convert" it to 9 pin. The need for null-modem probably took him weeks to figure out.

    I think this kid should get off of my lawn.

  13. Installation skillz? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    His instructions are weird. You don't need ncurses to get a serial terminal working. serial port supporting getty (like agetty) is enough. and to activate changes in inittab you don't need to reboot your computer (it's not windows, you know..) just run "telinit q".

  14. Re:I'd just like to interject. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    You're forgetting one simple GNU/Fact - rms is GNU/God. He created the GNU/Heavens and the GNU/Earth!

  15. HOWTO by anti-NAT · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Add the following to /etc/inittab

    # Serial tty in case console stuffs up
    s1:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -L -w 9600 ttyS0 vt100

    then

    telinit q

    and you're done. Now you too can have a vt100 plugged into your ttyS0 serial port (or an emulator via a null modem cable running at 9600bps, no parity, 8 bits, 1 stop bit, no flow control)

    --
    The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
  16. Ok guys, this is how to do it by deckardt · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The sad guy mistook a db25 rs232 for a parallel port... sigh

    I've been doing this for years, since 1997... so this must be one of the oldest tricks in the book.
    Here is my 4 step recipe for Ubuntu, using USB serial adapters:

    1) hook up the stuff and config the terminals correctly (I used 9600 8n1 due to long cables, got weird chars at 19200+)
    2) Install Ubuntu on your system
    3) put the following in /etc/init/ttyUSB0.conf
    # ttyUSB0 - getty
    #
    # This service maintains a getty on tty1 from the point the system is
    # started until it is shut down again.

    #start on stopped rc RUNLEVEL=[2345]
    #stop on runlevel [!2345]

    respawn
    exec /sbin/getty -8 9600 ttyUSB0 vt100
    ---(repeat for as many terminals you have, incrementing the 0 of ttyUSB0 to 1 to 2 etc)---
    4a) reboot
      or
    4b) sudo service ttyUSB0 start
    (repeat for as many terminals you have, incrementing 0 to 1 to 2 etc) ...
    *) profit

    Here is my setup with a WYSE vt420 compatible and two vt320's
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/rickdeckardt/4748415699/

    Gee wiz, that was easy... So why is this on the frontpage of slashdot?

  17. Re:I'd just like to interject. by rishistar · · Score: 3, Funny

    Is he also responsible for GNU/Metal?!

    --
    Professor Karmadillo Songs of Science
  18. Not any Linux distro suitable for smartphones by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    I don't think the other distros in Meego's space (Android and ChromeOS) include ncurses or VTs. I could be very wrong, though.