
Using an Atari ST as Unix/Linux Terminal - indigodaddy
http://www.atari-wiki.com/index.php/Using_an_Atari_ST_as_Unix/Linux_Terminal
======
droithomme
Back in the 90s I ran Minix on my Atari and did serious development on it as a
contractor for various defense and aerospace companies.

One war story, a big name company had some image processing that needed to be
done on a spacecraft. Their scientist had written some software in lisp which
was incredibly slow and took 15-30 hours to process one image on a Sun
workstation. I was brought in to port it to C in the hopes of improving it, as
well as to add several new features. I saw that his algorithms were really bad
and rewrote the entire thing using entirely different algorithms I invented
myself, bringing the run time down under 10 seconds on my Atari.

I was pretty excited about this. The scientist took my algorithms and
published them in a journal as his own work without crediting me. So I quit.
Still pissed off about that one.

~~~
btrettel
If you're comfortable with giving details, I'd recommend posting a comment at
PubPeer on the paper.

[https://pubpeer.com/](https://pubpeer.com/)

Plagiarism like that is far too common. Every paper a plagiarist gets away
with helps their career and hurts other more honest folks because the number
of academic positions is limited.

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timthorn
As an 8 or 9 year old boy, I spent an afternoon calling out an interminable
list of numbers for my Dad to enter into DATA statements in a BASIC program on
our ZX Spectrum to turn it into a terminal emulator by means of a hex loader.
Once we'd entered it (correctly - we ended up making a few inevitable errors
along the way) and saved it(!) to tape, we hooked up our phone to an acoustic
coupler* and Dad spent a few minutes connected to the university mainframe.

* This (exact) one: [http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/37926/Moore-Reed-TC-3...](http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/37926/Moore-Reed-TC-301-universal-Acoustic-Coupler/)

~~~
jcims
We used to do the same with those machine code games for the c64 in the back
of Compute or Byte magazine. One reader, one typer and one proofer huddled
around the screen for hours.

The worst part is that we didnt have the 1541 drive yet, so the game was only
around for as long as the power was on.

The good old days lol

~~~
foobarian
Compute! had a handy little program to print a checksum of each line of BASIC
on the left margin. Then, their other BASIC listings had that checksum printed
alongside, so that eliminated the "proofer" job for us :-)

~~~
tomcam
MLX, I think it was called. I used it to type out Speedscript, a word
processor that took only 3K for my Commodore 64 and used it for my first years
as a professional writer, it was connected to a Brother electric typewriter
with a parallel printer interface to the Commodore 64.

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JdeBP
This was written in 2012.

The instructions for getting a TTY login session on the terminal device are
now out of date. /etc/inittab is a thing of the past, and telinit q is no
longer the tool.

In systemd operating systems, one would instantiate a serial-
getty@ttyUSB0.service , tweaked to set the TERM environment variable
appropriately.

On systems with nosh service management, one creates and uses an
agetty@ttyUSB0 or mgetty@ttyUSB0 service bundle, adjusted with "rcctl set" to
set the TERM environment variable appropriately. (What one does on runit/s6
systems is, of course, similar.)

* [http://jdebp.uk./FGA/inittab-getty-is-history.html](http://jdebp.uk./FGA/inittab-getty-is-history.html)

* [http://jdebp.uk./FGA/inittab-is-history.html](http://jdebp.uk./FGA/inittab-is-history.html)

* [https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/248313/5132](https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/248313/5132)

* [http://jdebp.uk./Softwares/nosh/guide/real-terminal-login.ht...](http://jdebp.uk./Softwares/nosh/guide/real-terminal-login.html)

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SmellyGeekBoy
I had exactly this setup a couple of years back using a Raspberry Pi and my
childhood STE (which is still going strong 25 years later!)

One benefit that the linked article doesn't mention is the ability to initiate
file transfers over the very same serial connection using ZMODEM / YMODEM /
Kermit etc. When I had this set up it was very useful to act as a bridge to my
NAS and download software from there onto the ST.

Good times!

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bencollier49
Hah, that's pretty amazing that someone put this online. I did this back at
the dawn of time with my old ST, some telephone cable, and Slackware Linux
running on - possibly an 8088 (or could have been a 486). Funny to see it crop
up again.

Of course, no-one in their right mind would do this to run a second terminal,
as the Atari ST had the worst keyboard since the ZX81.

~~~
weinzierl
> possibly an 8088 (or could have been a 486)

Almost certainly the latter. Linux ran only from the 386 upwards.

~~~
bencollier49
Must have been the 486. Actually, now you mention it, it certainly must have
been that machine, as a friend brought Slackware round for me to install from
a stack of 3.5" floppies, and the 8088 only had a 5.25" drive.

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Annatar
Atari ST will also run a normal EtherNet TCP / IP stack with Netusbee (I have
one):

[https://youtu.be/m3Lk96knpI0](https://youtu.be/m3Lk96knpI0)

~~~
maximus1983
I've done the same with my Amiga 600 / 1200 with a PCMCIA Ethernet Card and
Miami.

[http://www.retro-commodore.eu/network-installation-on-the-
am...](http://www.retro-commodore.eu/network-installation-on-the-amiga/)

~~~
amiga-workbench
I've got an RR-Net MK3 cart for my C64 and have the Contiki web browser handy.

[http://mos6581.com/pictures/commodore-64/fsf.jpg](http://mos6581.com/pictures/commodore-64/fsf.jpg)

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remvee
Aaah, those were the days.. I went from an ST to Slackware on a 386, hooked
them up using the serial port and wrote my own terminal emulator because
whatever emulator I could get my hands on could not keep up with the maximum
baudrate; [https://github.com/remvee/st-tty](https://github.com/remvee/st-tty)

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m-i-l
My dad's workplace had several original Atari 520ST machines (not the STM with
FM modulator or the STFM with floppy disk and modulator) which they used
simply as VT220 terminals for accessing their DEC PDP and VAX minicomputers.
Apparently the Ataris were a lot more cost effective than specialised VT220
terminals.

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keithnz
funny, this is exactly how I accessed the internet back in the early 90s, dial
up to a terminal on a unix (and VMS) box from my Atari ST :)

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tombh
Wait, am I reading that right? Debian 6 runs on the Atari ST with automatic
hardware detection?

Can it `ssh brow.sh`?

~~~
0815test
Debian does have an unofficial m68k port, although I'm not sure how well it
runs on this specific hardware. SSH from vintage hardware is a pain btw, there
is YT video somewhere of someone SSH'ing out from a 486-compatible "586" box
with a modern Linux install, and the overhead introduced by SSH is quite real
there.

~~~
walkingolof
It won’t run on an ST, but a Atari TT can run *nix like OS’s

~~~
cmrdporcupine
TT can actually run full Unix. Atari sold a full SYS V Unix for it, and later
on NetBSD was ported to it. m68k Linux also ran on it at one point, I believe.

Classic ST can't do it, because no MMU. On them we had MiNT, which was a Unix-
like extension to TOS. Ran fine on an ST with a 1MB or so of RAM. At various
times I ran a full suite of Unix ports... bash, emacs, nn, vi, the whole nine
yards. There was also a port of the MGR window system.

But the machines with an '030 (TT And Falcon) could run a proper Unix.
Including X11. I remember even seeing discussion of this in UnixWorld magazine
back in the day.

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dekhn
I bought an Apple IIe (just like my original personal computer), installed a
serial card, and used it as a terminal. You can connect to google and search
in text mode just fine.

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bhauer
Sounds fun, though I would recommend my old friend's FreeZe Dried Terminal as
the terminal program on the ST side.

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rebbie
I still have a Heath/Zenith terminal like the one pictured alongside the
story. Ahh ... memories :-)

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finphil
For those late weekend nights :)

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indigodaddy
I imagine similarly could be done on any old computer? (Amiga, etc?)

~~~
reaperducer
_I imagine similarly could be done on any old computer? (Amiga, etc?)_

Yes. I do this occasionally with a TRS-80 Model 100.

And back when they were both still current, I would dial in to a PR1ME and Vax
minicomputers with a Commodore 64.

My holy grail is figuring out how to run a personal Zork server on an Ubuntu
machine that I can access (serial or telnet) from the 100.

~~~
Zenst
[https://bytemyvdu.wordpress.com/2016/09/03/tandy-
trs80-m100-...](https://bytemyvdu.wordpress.com/2016/09/03/tandy-
trs80-m100-serial-terminal/) Would be most, if not all the battle. Might need
to run the serial at a lower speed to accommodate the serial buffer on the
M100. From there, you can telnet to the localhost and avoid a lot of messing
with the zork server if you are unable to hook it directly to the serial port
you are using.

~~~
reaperducer
That was actually the easy part. I'm already doing that. It's the Zork end
that's the problem.

~~~
Zenst
[http://www.retroadventures.net/zork-telnet-
server/](http://www.retroadventures.net/zork-telnet-server/) covers that and
as I said, you can just telnet to localhost from the M100.

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justaaron
\+ midi!

