[TUHS] Teletype

[Hoskins, Matthew E.]

I have a decwriter la120 which similar to Clem Cole's suggestion is
connected to a Raspberry Pi via a usb2rs232 adapter.   (Yes, i have a wifi
la120.)

Its works pretty well, just add a getty in inittab on the /dev/usbTTY0 and
bingo.  (Yes you will miss the modem connect sounds)


On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 5:07 PM, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:

> Brian,
>
> The easiest thing is set up a BSD box of any flavor (I have a FreeBSD box
> that used to have modems on it).   Then grab a USB to RS-232C cable if it
> does not have a serial ports on it already.   Make sure there is a
> getty/login configured for the port and your are set.   At that point you
> can directly attach the terminal to the cable.    No need for the modem.
>
> You will get the user effect, accept for the sounds of the modem
> connecting and dealing with dialing itself.  If you wanted those, you could
> of course put the terminal on a modem and connect the BSD system to a
> modem. Then either use to two POTS lines if you want to spend money from
> the TPC.   Actually thinking about, you could also set up a POTS line
> emulator (which if you google you can make one pretty easily).
>
> Funny, just this AM, I put into the the electronics recycling box at work
> 4 telebit "Worldblazer" modems and a POTS line emulator (and a bunch of
> other old junk).   I've been clean out my basement and I knew I would never
> use those again.
>
> Clem
>
>
> On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 2:52 PM, Brian Zick <brian at zickzickzick.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 11:27 AM, Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon at orthanc.ca>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On Aug 15, 2014, at 11:04 AM, Brian Zick <brian at zickzickzick.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> > Would it still be possible today for someone like me to go out, and
>>> find an old teletype terminal (an old ASR or DECwriter or something), set
>>> up a phone line and modem and get a roll of paper, and then actually use it
>>> to connect to other computers?
>>> >
>>> > I know it's not really practical today - but is it possible?
>>>
>>> Certainly it's possible.  Although you would really only be able to do
>>> it with an ASCII terminal.  A DECwriter would work fine.  For a Teletype
>>> beast, you would need to make sure it used ASCII.  But lacking lower case,
>>> I think you would find it too painful to use, even though all the current
>>> versions of UNIX (and Linux) I'm aware of still seem to support the
>>> necessary case conversion in the tty drivers.
>>>
>>
>> ​Hmm. So for a TTY that old there would probably be no option for
>> lowercase. That does sound a little painful, especially if I wanted to edit
>> modern programs..​
>>
>>
>>> Your biggest obstacle might be finding a host machine that still has a
>>> modem attached that you could dial in to :-)
>>>
>>
>> ​So perhaps I could simplify it and attach to a machine sitting next to
>> the TTY - which then in theory could connect to the outside world via the
>> usual means. I wonder, has anyone tried something like this?
>> ​
>>
>>> And, of course, everyone KNOWS the entire universe runs in terminals
>>> that support ANSI escape sequences for colour and cursor positioning.  Who
>>> needs termcap?  (I'm looking at you, git. And clang.)  So you might find
>>> setting TERM=dumb isn't quite enough.
>>>
>>> Also, ed(1) is a wonderful editor on a hardcopy terminal.  Unless you
>>> run it on Linux, which KNOWS the whole world runs on 24 line terminal
>>> windows, and therefore ed needs to pause its output.
>>
>>
>> ​I usually use vim, but before learning vim I learned ed and used it for
>> about a 2 month space for editing config files and things, so that should
>> hopefully be the easy part. :-)​
>>
>>
>> Brian Zick
>> zickzickzick.com
>>
>>      .:/
>>   ,,///;,   ,;/
>>  o:::::::;;///
>> >::::::::;;\\\
>>   ''\\\\\'' ';\
>>      \
>>
>>
>>
>>
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