Typewriter Hacked To Play Zork

UgLyPuNk writes "Typewriters that can type by themselves are one thing. Typewriters that can type by themselves and play Zork are totally different — the stuff that dreams are made of (at least the dreams of little girls who spent hours in front of a Commodore 64 telling the machine to GO NORTH and such)."

Comments

No words required, see link for pic.

[kheldan]

http://www.computermuseumgroningen.nl/terminals/teletypeclose.jpg

Re:No words required, see link for pic.

[Joseph Vigneau]

For more information on this model:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASR-33_Teletype

Re:No words required, see link for pic.

[Samantha Wright]

No sir. It's a legitimate mechanical typewriter, not a teletype. The disappointment you are looking for is in that it's Arduino-controlled, instead of having been mechanically engineered to actually play the game. This is confusing because Slashdot summaries usually mention the Arduino if they have the chance. But I guess the drive to be blatantly wrong in TFS is more powerful than the drive to plug nerdy products.

I used to have one of these...

[noidentity]

...though we called it a "printer". Also, are there any pictures of the thing from the front? Not everyone has the ability to view videos. All I can see are some internals pictures on the project page.

Better link for the video

[Monkey-Man2000]

At least for me: http://vimeo.com/16311288

Trek? Roguelikes?

[bughunter]

My very first computer game was TREK.BAS, hosted on a city hall computer and played on a DecWriter paper terminal hidden in a janitor's closet at my St. Petersburg, FL middle school.

Why the janitor's closet? Because that's where they could get to a phone line.

This machine could replicate that experience.

(OK, well, you'd have to pour some ammonia and pine sol on it, to really take me back, but I'm talking about the game...)

I used to play Star Trek on a Decwriter

[karlandtanya]

I think it was actually called Star Trek at the time, but at some point, people started calling it "Space War".
We had eliza, and dungeon, too, and a chat program called "connect".
Once the connect fans had a party in the basement of one of the dorms, because they had really nice computer equipment. VT50s.
They all sat at their terminals and "chat"ted with each other. While in the same room.

Re:I used to play Star Trek on a Decwriter

[rnturn]

I recall once a couple of us playing startrek on the school's HP3000 via a Teletype at 110 baud. (Tip: don't play with someone who's in the habit of asking for a map of the galaxy every other turn.)

Selectric Adapters

[CohibaVancouver]

In the early 80s, my "80-Micro" magazines used to have ads for a gadget that turned an IBM Selectric typewriter into a computer printer. You fit the device over the keyboard of your typewriter and it had a set of solenoids and plungers that, when signalled, pressed the appropriate keys, causing the typewriter to 'type.' I remember watching these beasties at trade shows - It was almost creepy.

Back in the day almost every office had an IBM Selectric, so this provided a means of getting a "letter quality" printer into an office during a time when a letter quality printer could cost $1500 or more ($3000+ in today's dollars).