Integrating a VT220 into my life • Hacker News Board

Re: Integrating a VT220 into my life

#41

Post by JoshTriplett » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 11:07 PM UTC

Bud wrote: post #34

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…

Wouldn't the very slow refresh rate of eInk be an issue here?

Many bi-stable displays can be quickly set in one direction, and only have a slow refresh cycle for clearing or "cleaning" the display. Given that, a terminal based on e-ink could potentially display characters quickly and only be slow when clearing or scrolling.

That'd still be painful for interactive use, though.

Re: Integrating a VT220 into my life

#42

Post by Cieplak » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 11:10 PM UTC

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...

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 functions to allow the GUI to inspect the diagram. Additionally, a set of "bindings" was provided to allow PS code to be called directly from the C programming language. NeXT used these bindings in their NeXTStep system to provide an object oriented graphics system. Although DPS was written in conjunction with NeXT, Adobe sold it commercially and it was a common feature of most Unix workstations in the 1990s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript#History

Re: Integrating a VT220 into my life

#43

Post by theoh » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 11:11 PM UTC

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...

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.

Re: Integrating a VT220 into my life

#44

Post by noobermin » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 11:11 PM UTC

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...

Could you not do a similar thing with html and css sans js?

Re: Integrating a VT220 into my life

#45

Post by displague » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 11:18 PM UTC

darklajid wrote: post #9

Looking at that workspace I just need - another large monitor - my MTG cards collection back - at least four magic cubes - a nerf gun and ... a VT220. At least I got that very same keyboard already. Seriously, that looks like a really nice working space, completely ignoring the fact that I just learned about sway (I'm on i3 here) in the process.

You would also need a vial of Uranium Ore. http://unitednuclear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cP...

Re: Integrating a VT220 into my life

#46

Post by aperrien » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 11:21 PM UTC

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…

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!

Re: Integrating a VT220 into my life

#47

Post by vmorgulis » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 11:25 PM UTC

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #28

vmorgulis wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very cool post :) The VT220 supports Sixels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixel I wonder if PySixel would work on real hardware: https://github.com/saitoha/PySixel HN thread about libsixel: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11340367

That's pretty cool! It reminds me of a similar project I did called z80e, which is an emulator for TI calculators [0]. It uses unicode braille to "render" the screen onto a terminal. Doesn't work on the VT220, though, for obvious reasons. [0] https://github.com/KnightOS/z80e

Fascinating!

I'm reading the source code of z80e (tui.c). Your idea of using unicode to display pixels is very interesting. I imagine a fallback mode for libsixel for terminals not sixel-compatible (or the opposite).

I try ton compile but it fails (first because scas was missing and now I have an "a2x: not found" in scas).

I appreciate a lot the "multitarget rendering" (emscripten, tui, sdl...).

Re: Integrating a VT220 into my life

#48

Post by paulmd » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 11:25 PM UTC

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...

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.

Re: Integrating a VT220 into my life

#49

Post by trollingineeer » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 11:30 PM UTC

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…

Why would you want to do this? Just plug it in!

Re: Integrating a VT220 into my life

#50

Post by smoyer » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 11:31 PM UTC

I recycled a couple of nice Hazeltine terminals about eight years ago ... About three years ago I was wishing that I had them back. Projects like this as well as their use (with a serial multiplexer) as the console for a rack of servers remind me of the good old days.