• Hemingways_Shotgun@lemmy.caEnglish
    4·
    16 hours ago

    Not the point of the meme, but where does one go about getting fresh supplies (ribbons, replacement keys, etc…) for old typewriters like this to keep them in top condition?

    • Hellfire103@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      1·
      11 hours ago

      Ah, well I’m not too sure. The typewriter itself came from a charity shop, and my grandma bought me the ribbon. I have only owned it for a few days, so I haven’t bought anything myself.

      There’ll be plenty of places online, though, and of course you do have !typewriters@lemmy.cafe at your disposal.

  • mlg@lemmy.worldEnglish
    18·
    1 day ago

    Terminal emulators are bloat, real arch users use the real teletype (tty) as intended lol

    • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
      9·
      1 day ago

      Terminal emulators are bloat

      The Linux kernel itself contains a terminal emulator — that’s how you can swap among virtual terminals on the console — and unless the code was rewritten at some point, that’s really the true core of Linux; the Linux kernel originally was a terminal emulator, before the other stuff got added. Before Linus even made his first announcement, when it was still a purely one-man project that he was banging on:

      https://lunduke.substack.com/p/the-very-first-interview-about-linux

      The very first interview about Linux with Linus Torvalds - Oct 28, 1992

      LN: Please give a short summary of the history of Linux.

      Linus: Difficult. “Linux” didn’t really exist until about August-91 - before that what I had was essentially just a very basic protected mode system that had evolved from a glorified “Hello world” program into a even more glorified terminal emulator. Linux stopped for quite a while at the terminal emulator stage: I played around with Minix, and used my protected mode program to read news from the univerity machine. No down/upload, but it did a fair vt100 emulation, and did it by using two tasks which communicated from keybodard->modem and modem->screen.

      By mid-summer -91, “Linux” was able to read the disk (joyful moment), and eventually had a small and stupid disk driver and a simple buffer cache. So I started out trying to make a filesystem, and used the Minix fs for simple practical reasons: that way I already had a file layout I could test things on. After some more programming (talk about glossing things over), I had a very simple UNIX that had some of the basic functionalities of the real thing: I could run small test-programs under it.

      That being said, I think that most people are probably using the framebuffer console these days — you aren’t usually talking to your graphics card in text mode on x86-64 machines, but rather in graphics mode, and an image of text is being rendered and handed to the graphics card, and I don’t know if internally, the original virtual terminal code is used beneath that or if there’s a different stack and two independent in-kernel virtual terminal emulators.

      • piper11@feddit.org
        1·
        23 hours ago

        Well, if you have one of those new fangled video terminals, and not a teletype connected through rs-232 serial.

  • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    28·
    2 days ago

    People actually used to use a bunch of solenoids to turn typewriters into printers back when printers were very expensive.

    • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
      13·
      1 day ago

      Instead of unalias ls to avoid having just ls send ANSI color escape codes to the terminal, he should really have passed the term argument to agetty, like maybe dumb.

      EDIT: At 10:22, where he starts typing the login, it looks like the teletype does seek back up to reposition the cursor at “LOGIN:”, so it does support at least some limited escape codes. Maybe something a little smarter than dumb.

      Hell, maybe there’s even an existing terminfo/termcap entry for a compatible teletype.

      EDIT2:

      $ infocmp -D|xargs -i% find % -type f|xargs -n1 basename|xargs -n1 infocmp|less

      Will give a searchable list of supported terminfo entries on a given Linux system.

      On Debian trixie, I don’t see an entry for a Model 15 Teletype, but they do have an entry for a “model 33 or 35 teletype”, tty33.

      EDIT3: Searching eBay, looks like there are apparently teletype machines available on eBay, though some additional poking around suggests that that may not be the most affordable way to get one.

      https://old.reddit.com/r/Teletype/comments/g30rdi/where_to_buy_first_teletype/

      Teletype post

      Where to buy first teletype?

      Hello everyone. I have always liked manual typewriters, as well as vintage computers. When I found out that teletypes existed, I thought the heavens had aligned for my ultimate device. Then I realized that I could not, for the life of me, find one at a decent price. I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of the hobbyists online did not purchase machines that were in need of repair for upwards of $2000. (Thanks, eBay.) So my question is, where should I look if I want to purchase my first teletype without getting ripped off? I assume those prices are very inflated, as I can’t imagine there is a massive market for these things. Also, does anyone have any suggestions for a good starting model? I just want to hook it up as a serial terminal. I have experience with modems, and if a modem is hardwired in, that’s fine.

      Oh yeah, don’t go buy one on ebay. People are insane about what they think their junk is worth, plus shipping is prohibitive. What you should do is subscribe to the Greenkeys mailing list and introduce yourself.

      Then do a little research about what kind of gear you want - an ascii one, like a 33, the kind they used to use as a computer terminal? An older 5-level one like a model 28? Even older, a model 15 or 19, or a 14 that prints/punches on paper tape instead of roll paper? Something obscure and odd looking like a 26? And ancient and rare historical artifact like a 12? Plus all the different countries’ variants, etc.

      Once you have some idea what you’re looking for, post to the greenkeys list and say what you’re after, how much work you’re able to put into getting it working (do you want something you can just start using, or do you want a restoration project?) and most importantly where you live.

      Once you’ve put it out there what you’re looking for, if it’s not super unusual it’s not unheard of for it to just appear at your door. A bunch of people have more teletype machines than they can really keep, and would much rather see them go to a good home than be scrapped. Especially since many collectors are elderly and thinking about what will happen to their stuff when they die.

      EDIT4: Oh, looking at the agetty command line, he passed “asr33”, for the term parameter, which is apparently a (much, much newer than the machine he has) teletype machine, but it shouldn’t support color, so I don’t know why he’d be worried about that. Maybe his ls aliased to ls --color=always instead of ls --color=auto or something; they don’t show it in the video. Or maybe unaliasing it wasn’t necessary, and he just didn’t realize it.

    • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
      3·
      1 day ago

      I was watching the thing and got to the part where he said that he was using XON/XOFF flow control and thought that the guy’s Arduino RS-232 ASCII-to-Baudot-encoding thing could be made more efficient if he’d make the encoder use the RS-232 RTS/CTS lines instead of XON/XOFF encoding. Then I realized that he’s converting to 45.5 baud, and that at that speed, even his 9600 baud line — normally the chokepoint for people with modern hardware, you know, 1980s and on or so — is blisteringly fast and inefficiency at that point is irrelevant.

    • porksnort@slrpnk.net
      1·
      1 day ago

      That was a complete rabbit hole. Thanks.

      The only thing possibly more epic would be converting a Linotype to a Linux terminal. It uses hot lead to create type for newspapers, etc.

      I was trained to use one as there were so many in use they still have some niche applications for specialty printing.

      Anyhow, I call them Satan’s Typewriters and still have small scars from hot lead all over my forearms. And I love technology.

      A good film:

      Linotype: The Film

      • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
        1·
        1 day ago

        Probably the most cost-effective option is gonna be a used daisy-wheel printer with continuous feed paper.

        I’d guess that the fastest — if all one wants is a very fast dead-wood terminal — is probably gonna be some kind of line printer. Apparently some of the late-model IBM line printers were made by a company called Printronix, which is still making printers. One of their printers, the P8C20, can apparently print at 2000 lpm. I can’t find any video of one printing, but here’s a video of an older 1500 lpm printer from them with the sound-isolation cover open. Dunno if it’s running at full speed there, though.

        • porksnort@slrpnk.net
          2·
          1 day ago

          I agree, and perhaps some deep diving to find an older dot matrix printer? Should be supremely hackable. I only have experience with these:

          Next-gen teletypes

          They were extremely durable and low maintenance. Also loud and more stress inducing than a modern SMS notification.

          Good times

          • over_clox@lemmy.world
            3·
            1 day ago

            Last I checked, hospitals around my area still use dot matrix printers, mainly because of carbon copy papers…