i use arch btw

Instead of unalias ls to avoid having just ls send ANSI color escape codes to the terminal, he should really have passed the term argument to agetty, like maybe dumb.

EDIT: At 10:22, where he starts typing the login, it looks like the teletype does seek back up to reposition the cursor at "LOGIN:", so it does support at least some limited escape codes. Maybe something a little smarter than dumb.

Hell, maybe there's even an existing terminfo/termcap entry for a compatible teletype.

EDIT2:

$ infocmp -D|xargs -i% find % -type f|xargs -n1 basename|xargs -n1 infocmp|less

Will give a searchable list of supported terminfo entries on a given Linux system.

On Debian trixie, I don't see an entry for a Model 15 Teletype, but they do have an entry for a "model 33 or 35 teletype", tty33.

EDIT3: Searching eBay, looks like there are apparently teletype machines available on eBay, though some additional poking around suggests that that may not be the most affordable way to get one.

https://old.reddit.com/r/Teletype/comments/g30rdi/where_to_buy_first_teletype/

:::spoiler Teletype post

Where to buy first teletype?

Hello everyone. I have always liked manual typewriters, as well as vintage computers. When I found out that teletypes existed, I thought the heavens had aligned for my ultimate device. Then I realized that I could not, for the life of me, find one at a decent price. I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of the hobbyists online did not purchase machines that were in need of repair for upwards of $2000. (Thanks, eBay.) So my question is, where should I look if I want to purchase my first teletype without getting ripped off? I assume those prices are very inflated, as I can't imagine there is a massive market for these things. Also, does anyone have any suggestions for a good starting model? I just want to hook it up as a serial terminal. I have experience with modems, and if a modem is hardwired in, that's fine.

Oh yeah, don't go buy one on ebay. People are insane about what they think their junk is worth, plus shipping is prohibitive. What you should do is subscribe to the Greenkeys mailing list and introduce yourself.

Then do a little research about what kind of gear you want - an ascii one, like a 33, the kind they used to use as a computer terminal? An older 5-level one like a model 28? Even older, a model 15 or 19, or a 14 that prints/punches on paper tape instead of roll paper? Something obscure and odd looking like a 26? And ancient and rare historical artifact like a 12? Plus all the different countries' variants, etc.

Once you have some idea what you're looking for, post to the greenkeys list and say what you're after, how much work you're able to put into getting it working (do you want something you can just start using, or do you want a restoration project?) and most importantly where you live.

Once you've put it out there what you're looking for, if it's not super unusual it's not unheard of for it to just appear at your door. A bunch of people have more teletype machines than they can really keep, and would much rather see them go to a good home than be scrapped. Especially since many collectors are elderly and thinking about what will happen to their stuff when they die. :::

EDIT4: Oh, looking at the agetty command line, he passed "asr33", for the term parameter, which is apparently a (much, much newer than the machine he has) teletype machine, but it shouldn't support color, so I don't know why he'd be worried about that. Maybe his ls aliased to ls --color=always instead of ls --color=auto or something; they don't show it in the video. Or maybe unaliasing it wasn't necessary, and he just didn't realize it.

That is insane!

I was watching the thing and got to the part where he said that he was using XON/XOFF flow control and thought that the guy's Arduino RS-232 ASCII-to-Baudot-encoding thing could be made more efficient if he'd make the encoder use the RS-232 RTS/CTS lines instead of XON/XOFF encoding. Then I realized that he's converting to 45.5 baud, and that at that speed, even his 9600 baud line --- normally the chokepoint for people with modern hardware, you know, 1980s and on or so --- is blisteringly fast and inefficiency at that point is irrelevant.

Damn, but we can be so creative!

glad I watched the whole thing, that is amazing

Shit that beats out connecting my 90s serial equipped typewriter to use as a terminal output.

That was a complete rabbit hole. Thanks.

The only thing possibly more epic would be converting a Linotype to a Linux terminal. It uses hot lead to create type for newspapers, etc.

I was trained to use one as there were so many in use they still have some niche applications for specialty printing.

Anyhow, I call them Satan’s Typewriters and still have small scars from hot lead all over my forearms. And I love technology.

A good film:

Linotype: The Film

Can anything not play Doom?

https://github.com/wojciech-graj/doom-ascii

The frame rate may be somewhat limited, but dealing with that is really just a skill issue.

You can crack a cacodemon over the noggin with it.

Check out the Olivetti pcs!

Huh, cool!

I've never actually lol'ed at a Linux meme until today.

And they tell me printing pdfs to read is waste!

Well, interoffice memos.

Mate, it's not that deep.

Terminal emulators are bloat

The Linux kernel itself contains a terminal emulator --- that's how you can swap among virtual terminals on the console --- and unless the code was rewritten at some point, that's really the true core of Linux; the Linux kernel originally was a terminal emulator, before the other stuff got added. Before Linus even made his first announcement, when it was still a purely one-man project that he was banging on:

https://lunduke.substack.com/p/the-very-first-interview-about-linux

The very first interview about Linux with Linus Torvalds - Oct 28, 1992

LN: Please give a short summary of the history of Linux.

Linus: Difficult. "Linux" didn't really exist until about August-91 - before that what I had was essentially just a very basic protected mode system that had evolved from a glorified "Hello world" program into a even more glorified terminal emulator. Linux stopped for quite a while at the terminal emulator stage: I played around with Minix, and used my protected mode program to read news from the univerity machine. No down/upload, but it did a fair vt100 emulation, and did it by using two tasks which communicated from keybodard->modem and modem->screen.

By mid-summer -91, "Linux" was able to read the disk (joyful moment), and eventually had a small and stupid disk driver and a simple buffer cache. So I started out trying to make a filesystem, and used the Minix fs for simple practical reasons: that way I already had a file layout I could test things on. After some more programming (talk about glossing things over), I had a very simple UNIX that had some of the basic functionalities of the real thing: I could run small test-programs under it.

That being said, I think that most people are probably using the framebuffer console these days --- you aren't usually talking to your graphics card in text mode on x86-64 machines, but rather in graphics mode, and an image of text is being rendered and handed to the graphics card, and I don't know if internally, the original virtual terminal code is used beneath that or if there's a different stack and two independent in-kernel virtual terminal emulators.

They've at least chosen to not include !.

Ah, my apologies. Just a sheet of normal ISO A4 printer paper. Nothing fancy.

Alright

The topping of this is going to require 220 lb 100% cotton vellum-finish cardstock and someone equipped with a calligraphy pen. There are some plotters that can take fountain pens.

If you use the standard editor, ed, then these sorts of things are no obstacle.

Just remap caps lock smh

Thanks!

Like a TTY?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleprinter

I want to see someone with too much time on their hands build a haunted typewriter, by hooking an electronic typewriter up to an LLM

That's literally card punchers.

Edit: better link, with video.

Surprisingly, just one. I did make a couple of mistakes, though. (e.g. typing an 8 instead of a ' on the bottom-left corner of the arch, and adding the dashes after 9.9.9.9 in the ping output instead of later on).

Ah, well I'm not too sure. The typewriter itself came from a charity shop, and my grandma bought me the ribbon. I have only owned it for a few days, so I haven't bought anything myself.

There'll be plenty of places online, though, and of course you do have !typewriters@lemmy.cafe at your disposal.

Anyone remember The Boy With Immovable Hair (TBWIH)?

Not certain of whether you're thinking specifically of plain ASCII art or also ANSI art (which was specifically around that time and made use of PC drawing characters and ANSI escape sequences), but there's a software package called ansilove that will render ANSI art, as well as some related text art formats, into an image for viewing.

https://www.ansilove.org/

It's packaged in Debian Trixie.

https://16colo.rs/ is a gallery of ANSI art. A lot of the thumbnails are in grayscale, but tap on them and they'll open up and have a lot of colorful artwork.

Well, it's a very stripped down installation. No bootloader or init system, no display drivers, busybox replaces a load of stuff, ed(1) is the only editor available, and a few things were compiled from source.

When you've got 0B of storage and 0B of RAM, you've got to work with what you have.

It was either red or black, and Arch definitely doesn't use red in its branding.

That typewriter probably doesn't support color, but apparently some had a ribbon with multiple colors and the ability to select among them.

https://old.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1jnie9o/can_someone_pls_tell_me_why_my_typewriter_has/

This guy is using it to do color accents with typewriter art:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bqi2qY918M

EDIT: Oh, wait, holy shit. This ribbon is multicolor --- you can see the red stripe on the ribbon, and apparently the Remington Travel Riter Deluxe does support multiple colors on a ribbon.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/133756651478

EDIT2: Here's the manual:

https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/RemingtonRandTravel-RiterDeLuxe_Manual.pdf

I think that it's the lever in the upper right on the front that switches color.

EDIT3: You know, decades ago, I remember fiddling with my dad's typewriter. It had a selector lever there too. Could never figure out what it was for, seem to recall that it adjusted the height of the hammers, which seemed pointless. He only had a black ribbon, but I bet that it supported a multicolor ribbon, and that's what it was for. Never did resolve that mystery until now!

Nope, typewriter

My guy, I literally typed out the fastfetch output for Arch Linux.