Collaborate Disseminate
These days, our video cards are actually as powerful as yesterday’s supercomputer and our monitors are bigger than the TVs most of us had as kids. But how did we …read more Continue reading A Look Back at Computer Displays
When Datamedia announced their new DT80 terminal as a VT100 killer back in 1979, they were so confident of its reliability, they threw in a full one-year warranty. Now, decades …read more Continue reading Re-reclaimed From Nature: Resurrecting a DT80 Terminal
When [Michael Gardi] finished his scaled down DEC VT100 replica a few months ago, he made it very clear that the project was only meant to look like a vintage …read more Continue reading 2:3 Scale VT100 Terminal Gets Closer to its Roots
Software developers won’t ever run out of subjects to argue and fight about. Some of them can be fundamental to a project — like choice of language or the programming paradigm to begin with. Others seem more of a personal preference at first, but can end up equally fundamental on …read more
Continue reading Ask Hackaday: Are 80 Characters Per Line Still Reasonable In 2020?
We get a lot of Kickstarter pitches in our email, but this one is different. First of all, it’s over. No biggie there. Secondly, it’s a laser-cut hurdy gurdy. What’s a hurdy gurdy? It’s a musical instrument that uses a wheel to vibrate strings. It has drone strings and a rudimentary keyboard for the melody. Think of it as ‘string bagpipes’ and you’re not that far off. This means you can laser cut (or 3D print, someone get on it) a hurdy gurdy, and that’s just awesome.
I wrote the previous paragraph without referencing Donovan. You’re welcome, Internet.
[Spencer] found …read more
From debug messages to the fundamental ‘hello world’, serial communication does it all over three little wires. Now imagine being able to cut the cord to your next microcontroller project and use your phone as a VT100 terminal. This was the premise of [Ondřej Hruška]’s Wireless Terminal Project where he took an ESP8266 and added an in-browser terminal emulator which can be accessed over WiFi. The final hardware uses an ESP-01 module mounted atop a breadboard adapter with a 3.3V LDO, protection circuitry for the pins and under-voltage disable.
The firmware is based on [SpriteTM]’s libesphttpd code which was modified …read more
When you have a microcontroller or other microcomputer on the bench in front of you and it lacks the familiar keyboard and display of a modern desktop computer, what do you do when you wish to program it or otherwise issue commands? Unless you are a retro computer enthusiast who longs for a set of Altair-style toggle switches, the chances are you’ll find its serial port and attach a terminal.
Serial terminals, devices containing a screen and keyboard hooked up to send and display text from a serial port, used to be a staple of computing, but as standalone devices, …read more
Continue reading Hackaday Prize Entry: Pocket Serial Terminal
When a dumpster dive yielded a vintage video display terminal, [dennis1a4] knew just what to do — bring the Heathkit H19 back to life and stuff a Raspberry Pi inside.
The early days of the personal computer era were a time of great market diversity. Everyone was making stuff needed to cobble together your perfect computer, and terminals were among the most important pieces of gear. Lear Siegler, DEC, Wyse — everyone was in on the game. Even Heathkit competed with its H19 serial terminal, which would have set you back a thousand or so early-1980s dollars.
The terminal [dennis1a4] …read more
Continue reading Raspberry Pi Hitches Ride Inside Vintage Terminal
If you are a certain age, you probably remember writing software (or playing Adventure) bathed in an amber or green light from an old CRT terminal. If you are even older, you might have found it way better than punching cards, but that’s another story. [Tobi] wanted to relive those days (well, sounds like he is too young to have lived them to start with) so he hooked up a VT220 terminal to his Linux box.
This isn’t that surprising. Linux’s forefather, Unix, expected these kind of terminals (or a hard copy TeleType) and all the trappings for working with …read more
Back in the old days, the cool kids didn’t have an Apple II or a Trash-80. The cool kids had jobs, and those jobs had Vaxxen all over the place. The usual way of working with a Vax would have been a terminal, a VT220 at least, or in the case of [Sudos]’ experiments with a Raspberry Pi, A DEC VT510, a single session, text only serial terminal.
Usually, when we see a ‘new hardware stuffed into old tech’ project like this, the idea is simply to find a use for the old hardware. That makes sense; a dumb terminal …read more
