Very cool project using an antique teletype
Excellent post! Cool to see and imagine if you had 30 of these going all day in the office 😆
Awesome. Related:
I really want to try a paper terminal experience, mainly to experience using a line-based text editor to see how having printed output (which you can tear off and keep on your desk for reference) differs from doing it in a scrolling terminal.
However I don’t want to deal with vintage analog hardware. I tried looking for modern-ish line-based printers and such but couldn’t find anything that could legibly output characters as you type them. Any tips?
I realised only this week that ed is exactly what you would need if you had to edit something on a paper terminal. I always though it was just strange that it exists and is still included with things.
I’ve seen Linux distributions omitting it now. But it’s a useful last resort if you end up with a dumb terminal, and maybe it has a niche use in scripted editing? And of course there’s a small community of people continuing to use it for fun, out of curiosity, or whatever. Check out https://bsd.network/web/@ed1conf
Is ending up with a dumb terminal without seeking one out a thing that can still happen? Unless you’re trapped in an electronic components warehouse and have to build your own, haha.
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one outside of a historical context. I guess the military might still use them for prod.
Probably still included because ed is occasionally used in shell scripts.
It’s good in an emergency over a slow or noisy connection. Back in the 90s, I once talked a non-computer user through repairing a corrupted config file, over the phone. ed was good for that.
Invidious link for other people who Google doesn’t like: http://iteroni.com/watch?v=2XLZ4Z8LpEE
Edit: Holy crap, it’s so satisfying hearing all the clanking as the text comes through, and I didn’t even code this! I was confused about 13:20 when he says there’s no equal sign; there’s definitely one in most versions of Baudot code, but apparently not US-TTY. Maybe he could make BELL another escape for more characters? I don’t know what modern use it has.
Here’s the Wikipedia on the Model 15.
