
Using a 1930 Teletype as a Linux Terminal [video] - hexadec
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XLZ4Z8LpEE&
======
Animats
Model 15 machines have such a long life. I've restored two of those, plus
three Model 14 machines, an earlier 1920s design. My machines have been to
about a dozen steampunk conventions.[1] People send in their messages by
texting, and they're printed on the Model 15, then delivered by a messenger.
The video shows two acting students running our steampunk telegraph office.
They're great at it. Web site: [2]

For smaller conventions, we have a semi-portable, a Model 14 tape printer in a
road case made to fit. The tape is pasted down on telegram blanks, just like
real telegrams up to the mid-1950s.

I normally run these off EeePC subnotebooks that run XUbuntu Linux. Those
subnotebooks are about $30 on eBay, so I bought some of them for small
projects. It's like having a Raspberry PI with a keyboard, screen, battery,
and power supply all in a convenient clamshell case. I could run them as a
Linux terminal, but I usually run them with a Python program that performs the
telegraph office functions.

The lack of lower case is less of a problem in this application than the lack
of emoji. I put the entire dictionary of emoji names into the program, and it
spells out the emoji as (happy face), etc. That's amused some people who sent
emoji-heavy messages.

The Right To Repair people would love those machines. Every part is
individually replaceable. The price of this is a huge number of adjustments,
plus annual oiling and cleaning. Few people today would put up with that much
periodic maintenance in an office machine. It does let them be restored a
century after they were built.

[1] [https://vimeo.com/124065314](https://vimeo.com/124065314)

[2] [http://www.aether.ltd](http://www.aether.ltd)

~~~
Aloha
That's the thing about tech of that era, a moderately equipped machine shop
can build almost any of it.

If there was a big crisis, We could retreat back to 1930 level of technology
with relative ease in fact, maybe even later. That gives us radio, telephones,
telegraphy, et al. All that tech can be made in small workshops.

~~~
derefr
That's, to me, the amazing thing about _machining_ : pretty much any invention
from the dawn of civilization up until the vacuum tube can be made in "a
moderately equipped machine shop." Because, if a part requires a custom tool
to build, it's very likely there's a version of that _tool_ you can build with
just the same 1930s tech you use to build anything else, in about four hours.

A good chunk of hobbyist-machinist YouTube is essentially just people
bootstrapping themselves into a complete shop's worth of tools starting from
three or four primitives, and it's kind of wonderful to watch.

(I'm always kind of disappointed whenever one of these hobbyist folks get a
CNC mill or something, because it throws off that bootstrapping feeling. I
know it was never their goal, but they were coincidentally pulling it off
until that point.)

~~~
Aloha
Including the vacuum tube, you just need glassblowing equipment and a good
vacuum pump, and some other specialized tools. That said, the first voice
transmissions used either alternators or high speed rotary spark gap
transmitters.

Another thing is audio amplification can be done without tubes or transistors,
you can use a mechanical amplifier which is literally a transducer that is
mechanically coupled to a carbon microphone, and a local power source
(battery) making it possible to build analog phone lines that run several
hundred miles without tube type amps.

See
[https://www.youtube.com/user/glasslinger](https://www.youtube.com/user/glasslinger)

~~~
derefr
Sure, I mostly brought up vacuum tubes as an endpoint because constructing the
specialized tools to make one is no longer a _four-hour_ job. You run into a
wall where, to get to the point where you can do the glassblowing, you have to
first bootstrap an entirely-separate set of primitives (kiln, quench, anvil,
grinding/polishing stones, etc.) that you may not have needed up until that
point if you’d just been working with scrap stock.

(And then the same is true of everything after that, because transistors
require photolithography, and photolithography requires good lenses.)

Of course, if you’re unlocking your tech-tree in a breadth-first direction,
you’ll already have the glassworking primitives around due to them being
common prerequisites for refining metal ore :)

------
lordleft
Amazing video. A lot of the quirks of UNIX and editors like vi make way more
sense when you become aware of the role of the teletype in early computing.

~~~
dboreham
Editors like ed. Vi was waaayyy post teletype.

~~~
ink_13
vi is so-named because it is based on VIsual mode for the standard EDitor.
There's less distance than one might think.

~~~
JdeBP
That includes the distance between the X and D keys? (-: ex, not ed.

~~~
ink_13
ex is the EXtended standard editor, so it's in the path, sure. But vi and ed
actually have many of the same commands.

~~~
JdeBP
You are still claiming that ed is the one with the visual mode?

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jv22222
Finally, existence proof for all those Hollywood movies where the hero
macgyvers a vacuum cleaner and a radio into a multi dimensional portal.

I mean, it proves you can upvert old stuff anyways ;)

~~~
hexadec
Hacker voice "I'm in" and the telex sounds off in the background.

It is interesting how you can track the history of remote terminals and make
them work at all. It shows the true value of clear documentation.

~~~
Animats
Yes, it does. Those machines are very well documented. Here are the manuals:

[http://aetherltd.com/manuals.html](http://aetherltd.com/manuals.html)

~~~
Ericson2314
Ah.... back when we documented things.

~~~
rbanffy
Imagine not having to rewrite all the docs every six months...

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knowaveragejoe
Wonderful youtube channel! I recommend it to anyone interested in retro
hardware, in particular hardware reverse engineering.

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donaldihunter
This reminds me of the Model 33 [1] we had connected up to a ZX Spectrum [2],
back when I was a kid.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletype_Model_33](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletype_Model_33)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Interface_1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Interface_1)

~~~
kbr2000
Cool! Made a "light" attempt at this when I was a kid, hooking up a matrix
printer to my MSX computer [0], and learning BASIC's PEEK and POKE from my
dad, to make a kind of typewriter: type a character, it prints at the curpos
and advances the printhead; backspace moved the head one place back; return
advances the page one line. Lots of fun :)

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSX](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSX)

------
IIAOPSW
So I currently have some Google cloud credits for a very computationally
intense project. I have a 160 core VM with Debian on it and every time I start
up the terminal it blows my mind that this blinking little cursor costs ~$17k
per month (if I left it on). For the sake of achieving ludicrous anachronism,
I now want to hook this machine up to the teletype.

------
non-entity
Awesome! These are the the type of projects I want to so, but am limited by my
electronics ability.

~~~
kbr2000
Well, good luck! Remember it's never too late to learn something ;)

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ddevault
This is amazing! I'm very jealous. I've wanted to get ahold of these to do the
very same thing for a long, long time. I made do with a cheap hack instead:

[https://drewdevault.com/2019/10/30/Line-printer-shell-
hack.h...](https://drewdevault.com/2019/10/30/Line-printer-shell-hack.html)

~~~
woodrowbarlow
jsyk, it looks like spacepub.space has an expired certificate, so your
embedded video on that page isn't loading.

~~~
ddevault
Thanks, I noticed that too. I'm transcoding the longer video to rehost it
myself.

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herpderperator
This is super cool, but the fact that it only prints uppercase characters
would be a nightmare if a standard case-sensitive filesystem is used.

~~~
kps
That's why `stty lcase` exists.

~~~
rbanffy
Model 33's also didn't have lowercase. It was not that common in terminals
until the early 70's at least. The DEC VT05, for instance, didn't have
lowercase.

~~~
dboreham
If we're playing competitive nostalgia, I owned (and used) a 5-channel
teletype (electromechanical, lots of oil). Not having lower case would have
been sheer luxury.

Interesting perspective when you realize you're looking at a UART implemented
in tin.

~~~
rbanffy
If we are competing, you win.

I briefly used a 33 (as a peripheral to a CNC training computer) and I still
miss that cadenced hum.

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type0
Great hands on Ed demonstration, not that you would need an actual tty for
that but it puts things in perspective.

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lqet
Next step: Using a a Linotype [0] as a Linux terminal :)

I would love to have my terminal output cast in lead!

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linotype_machine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linotype_machine)

~~~
rini17
Or as output for web engine. To drive home the phrase "Reflows are expensive".

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earthboundkid
In college, I wanted to buy a vterm for connecting to my laptop and being
cool, but I couldn’t find one on eBay for college student prices.

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phreeza
Fascinating to think that Unix is older than this teletype was at the
inception of Unix...

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harrygeez
This is glorious. I'd love to have one of this at home, just for the novelty

~~~
donaldihunter
Ideal for SMS. The Steampunk Message Service.

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tpmx
How is the decoding logic implemented inside these machines?

Any informative websites?

~~~
lokedhs
He has this playlist on the same channel where they restore the Model 19, and
they explain in detail how the decoder works:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NuvwndwYSY&list=PL-_93BVApb...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NuvwndwYSY&list=PL-_93BVApb5-9eQLTCk9xx16RAGEYHH1q)

~~~
tpmx
Could you give us a brief summary? Is it purely mechanical? Any relays/tubes?

~~~
lokedhs
It's purely mechanical. I'm really not the right person to explain this, but
the second video in the playlist explains it.

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WhyNotHugo
This is beautiful.

