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Integrating a VT220 into my life

drewdevault.com

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Re: Integrating a VT220 into my life

#71

Post by wtbob »

Honestly, were it not for a web browser I really wouldn't need a GUI at all: everything else I do is a terminal and emacs (sure, both are running in X, but I don't really use their GUI features for much).

I remember when I was a kid with access to a local university's systems, and the only way to do anything was with dumb terminals. I telnetted to MUDs, FTPed software, read Usenet — in a lot of ways those dumb terminals were smarter than my current computer. Sure, I can still do all that, but the magic is gone.

Re: Integrating a VT220 into my life

#72

Post by Keyframe »

I used VT320 (amber) "back in the day" a lot. I wish I could find one to hook up to my workstation or an SGI Octane2 (for full retro feeling to it). I would only write text/screenplays on it anyways. Something about CRTs that modern monitors haven't captured.

Re: Integrating a VT220 into my life

#73

Post by outworlder »

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?

Would that be significantly slower that phosphor persistence of old displays?

Actually, depending on what you are doing, the nostalgia-induced slowness might even be intended.

Re: Integrating a VT220 into my life

#74

Post by TerryADavis »

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

Re: Integrating a VT220 into my life

#75

Post by johnohara »

These things continue to show up in the weirdest places as never-intended consoles.

Phone switches, network devices, control panels, etc.

There were so many of them leftover from the switch to PC's and they always seemed to work (once you got the parity right). Usually in some closet somewhere, balanced on top of a box with the keyboard leaning against the wall. Need a power cable? Grab one from a PC, use it to power up, change some settings, turn it off and put the cable back.

Thank you Ken Olsen.

Re: Integrating a VT220 into my life

#76

Post by paulmd »

aexaey wrote: post #60
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…

1mA/MIPS is a pretty generous power budget, with ESP8266 easily fitting the bill (56mA @80MHz + wifi rx; 10 uA in deep sleep [1]). Talking of which - here is Jeroen Domburg's project where he used exactly this chip to make a wireless battery-powered e-ink display: [0] http://spritesmods.com/?art=einkdisplay [1] http://bbs.espressif.com/viewtopic.php?t=133

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 recharging for as long as possible, so this is perfect.

Maybe I can embed some stuff like vim or emacs on the device itself to help reduce utilization of the wifi. Is there any sort of "smart" protocol that could handle buffering files while editing on a remote host? I can probably do it, but I'd rather not reinvent the wheel, caching can be non-trivial.

Secondary use-case: RTTY or PSK31 or other amateur-radio textmode terminal, that could idle for as long as possible on a portable (QRP) battery pack. When you're schlepping the gear around, every ounce counts. Something that can talk serial is probably good enough, wifi is redundant there.

Re: Integrating a VT220 into my life

#77

Post by salgernon »

At work, I have a Wyse 50 tailing my console log. It's actually really useful to be able to debug stuff when something goes awry on my development machine.

For fun at home I have an ADDS Regent 25 with a raspberry pi inside. Turn it on, it boots to Debian and binds to the network. I force the kids to play 'snake' on it when I'm sick of them using iPads.

In my home "office" I've got my VT102 tied to a PDP/8 simulator on a pi, with one of these kit front panels:

  http://obsolescence.wix.com/obsolescence#!pidp-8/cbie
(Those were before my time, although I remember playing ADVENT on one (or a DEC 10?)

Re: Integrating a VT220 into my life

#78

Post by paulmd »

grahamburger wrote: post #66
Syrup-tan wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Euhh, I'm not sure I understand your use-case, but e-ink displays aren't especially "cheap", or such. They take a noticeable amount of time to update the display, so doing things like typing, or viewing output from top(1) would be less than ideal. (This seems to get better with firmware, and being "smart" about which places of the screen get updated, generally) The appeal, at least to me, is that they can display inf…

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.

Re: Integrating a VT220 into my life

#79

Post by paulmd »

TerryADavis wrote: post #74
paulmd wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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 the 'divine' part but it's certainly a fascinating OS. Writing an OS is a tough task by any means, let alone a reasonably fast one with a novel presentation. That's a lot of work, even for a productive OS programmer.

Have you taken a look at MenuetOS, Plan9, Oberon, or other non-traditional OSs? I'm curious what you have to think of their own unique features.

I applaud your goal of taking it back to basics. I think you're largely right about the number of abstractions between you and the hardware. Really really fast code needs to be written close to the metal.

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