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Integrating a VT220 into my life

drewdevault.com

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Re: Integrating a VT220 into my life

#91

Post by kqr »

groovy2shoes wrote: post #62
paulmd wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually found a video of a Kindle being used as a terminal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymei7UwBgX4 Looks like it's running a pretend-terminal website which probably explains the latency (the Kindle does not have a fast processor). Way on the other end - here's a Dasung 13.3" eInk monitor (i.e. you feed it DVI and it handles all the display driving for you). It can be yours for a cool $1000. I'll pass, but it'…

I want one of those monitors so bad. Why does it have to be $1000?! Anyone willing to contribute to my Indiegogo campaign? ;)

I want one too. Suddenly, I know what I'd do if I won the lottery.

Re: Integrating a VT220 into my life

#92

Post by jacobush »

lucaspiller wrote: post #86
paulmd wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd forgotten all about the ESP8266 but this project is about 95% of what I'm aiming for. The rest should be relatively trivial programming work, so thanks! Can't speak for the other guy (who wants a portable monitor+keyboard system), but what I'm mostly looking for is a terminal that I could carry around/outside the house (i.e. potentially high-glare conditions) and program while connected to wifi, while not recharg…

I regularly use Vim over high latency connections (50ms+) for extended periods, and it's really not that big a deal.

If you use classic vi modes, I think vi/vim is much more forgiving over high latency than emacs, for some reason.

Re: Integrating a VT220 into my life

#93

Post by notalaser »

paulmd wrote: post #48
nickpeterson wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of random, but you made me think of it. I always wanted to do an entire site in PDF, with all the links opening other pdfs on the same server. That or postscript...

This reminds me of Terry Davis' TempleOS, which features an ubiquitous hyperdocument system. http://www.codersnotes.com/notes/a-constructive-look-at-temp... Terry himself is schizophrenic but it's a fascinating piece of outsider art in many respects. He's even posted on HN under several accounts, but he's aggressive and disruptive and inevitably ends up banned.

I get why you'd have that impression (due to his mental illness), but TermpleOS is certainly not outsider art. While unconventional in some ways (and not sharing the aims of commercial projects), it's no more a piece of outsider art than e.g. KnightOS. Its code isn't bad, the design is certainly not idiosyncratic. It has none of the "classic" traits of outsider art that other hobby projects don't. You can read its code much like that of any other kernel. And IIRC, Terry Davis has the kind of academic credentials you'd expect from someone writing an operating system, too.

Re: Integrating a VT220 into my life

#94

Post by klodolph »

nickpeterson wrote: post #32
paulmd wrote: post #30

Quasi-related: I've always wanted an ultra-low-power dumb terminal using eInk paper displays - something you could hit days of runtime with using a small battery pack. eInk uses no power when they're not updating - so idling or long-running operations would hardly use any power. So far the easiest approach I've found is using a hacked Kindle with an attached keyboard. You can run a terminal client on it and ssh into…

Kind of random, but you made me think of it. I always wanted to do an entire site in PDF, with all the links opening other pdfs on the same server. That or postscript...

I've played video games that were distributed as PDFs. You can actually do a lot inside a PDF.

Re: Integrating a VT220 into my life

#96

Post by andrey-g »

bjackman wrote: post #55
aperrien wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an aside, do you have an idea where to buy e-ink displays? I'd love to experiment with some. If fact if I could I'd love to get one of the poster sized ones!

Sparkfun sell small ones in kits.

Do you mean Adafruit?

Re: Integrating a VT220 into my life

#97

Post by seanp2k2 »

paulmd wrote: post #78
grahamburger wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like I'm missing something - why do you need it to run on battery if it's consistently monitoring a specific machine? Isn't their power pretty much anywhere you'd need something like this?

I edited my use-case after he replied - I think he would be A-OK with something that could be reliably powered from a USB port. I don't speak for him, but I think we've chatted on this topic before.

You can power a "Full HD" monitor off USB. These have been around for a while, but it's really fun to see someone set up with dual screens at a coffee shop running on batteries: https://www.asus.com/us/Monitors/MB168BPlus/

Re: Integrating a VT220 into my life

#98

Post by TerryADavis »

paulmd wrote: post #79
TerryADavis wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a professional operating system developer. In 1990, I was hired to work on Ticketmaster's VAX operating system.

Hi Terry! Sorry, didn't know you had a new account. I read some of your post history - can you explain how what you were doing with Ticketmaster was systems programming? It sounds like what would now be considered application programming, but I have no idea how intensive your work was at the time. High-performance code can often cross the line. TempleOS is simply fascinating. I'm sure you know that I can't agree on t…

I worked on the code that installed language modules into kernel space. I wrote a check-disk utility. I did a file compression archive. There were serial port drivers and I made a command to reset a stuck port.

I worked in VAX assembly language.

I did firmware for a bar code reader networking device with keypad and display. I worked on image processing for an actual bar code reader itself.

I worked there 1990-1996. About half was user space. The other half was kernel or firmware on bare metal.

-----

Pat and I started at the same time. He was in school with me, in fact in my differential equations class. He dropped out of school. I stayed in and got my master's in electrical engineering while working part time at Ticketmaster. I graduated with master's in 1994 and stayed with Ticketmaster for a year.

I returned to Ticketmaster for 3 weeks in 2002. Pat was a boss.

Re: Integrating a VT220 into my life

#99

Post by ricksplat »

Cieplak wrote: post #42
nickpeterson wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of random, but you made me think of it. I always wanted to do an entire site in PDF, with all the links opening other pdfs on the same server. That or postscript...

Funny you bring that up, I was just reading about this: When Steve Jobs left Apple and started NeXT, he pitched Adobe on the idea of using PS as the display system for his new workstation computers. The result was Display PostScript, or DPS. DPS added basic functionality to improve performance by changing many string lookups into 32 bit integers, adding support for direct output with every command, and adding functio…

I remember some fuss being made about this in the early days of OS X, about "looking glass" (the gui system) using display postscript. Anybody know anything about that? If it's still a part of OS X or if it fell by the way side?

Re: Integrating a VT220 into my life

#100

Post by yourapostasy »

theoh wrote: post #43
nickpeterson wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of random, but you made me think of it. I always wanted to do an entire site in PDF, with all the links opening other pdfs on the same server. That or postscript...

NeWS was an interesting experiment in this direction. It seems quite odd that old VT terminal hardware is still in use, while it would be almost impossible to resurrect something like NeWS. A case of complexity I guess, but also the worrying volatility of storage media.

I suspect VT-standards-related hardware (and software emulators) survives because the protocol can be implemented without fear of getting dragged into court for licensing fees. Whereas if you wanted to implement NeWS (or Display Postscript) even today, you still have to license it. There is an informal mention that NeWS had too many third-party components to ever open source. [1]

[1] https://github.com/IanDarwin/OpenLookCDROM

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