I knew some old-school librarians that were so fast on the old school terminal opacs that you couldn't even see the screen fully refresh. The management interface was a good bit different with a lot more options. Some of the librarians and clerks would have a lot of quick keys programmed to swap between various functions. If you messed up someones quick keys, you were reading the stacks for lost books (like being sent to the library clerk dungeon). Watching skilled terminal opac wizardry was a sight to behold. Something died the day we went to GUI. Many of the wizards never were able to fully adapt to it. - Nice video, Thanks!
Great vudei! I used to prefer terminals to GUI. I started with PDP11's and later with screen and tmux I could do so much from a terminal. I really enjoyed X-Windows terminals from NCD, etc That was the best of all worlds. Running an office with Sun Microsystems servers to Xterms and serial terminals was amazing. So much less admin work compared to everyone having their own Windoze PC. Thanks again. Would be funny to get an old Xterminal running with Linux. :)
Veronica, you took me back to the 80s/90s when I spent about 13 years working with Wyse50 terminals and various versions of UNIX/Xenix/HP-UX. I did field support for a multi-national in Latin America, setting up UNIX systems, modems, etc. Burnt my fingers soldering cables lots of times making serial cables :) The Wyse terminal's programmable function keys were a real revelation to me and I made good use of them to speed up data entry. I ended up traveling with short serial cables which converted from DB-9 to DB-25 or DB-15, male to female, female to female, etc because I never knew what I would meet in a particular country. And, of course, different systems had different pinouts, so I would always need to have photocopies of the pinouts for each system. There's a wonderful book called the C programmer's guide to serial communications by Joe Campbell which goes into wonderful detail about anything and everything to do with serial communications, the ASCII character set, the various protocols, UARTs, modems and all kind of serial stuff. This used to be my life on a daily basis. One would think that using these terminals would limit productivity, but I remember having 100 users on a HP PA-RISC system with a 48MHz CPU, 64MB RAM and nobody ever complained about speed. We ran everything on that system - email, word processing, spreadsheets, database applications, program development, etc. Those old systems were remarkably efficient and productive. For heads down data entry, there was nothing faster than a green screen terminal. You never moved your hands from the keyboard to click a mouse, so you could get up to high speeds for data entry. I've even seen people punch data faster than the screens could keep up without losing their rhythm, which looks like magic the first time you see it.
Character-mode terminals were resource hogs: that HP server had to immediately react to every key pressed by every user. _Much_ more efficient were block-mode terminals like the IBM 3270: you filled in a screen full of data, pressed the XMIT key, and only then did the computer notice you. That way 100 users had good response on a 2 MIPS system with only 6MB RAM, while also running batch jobs.
You know you're a field support GOD when you've got your serial cable, null-modem cable, 9 pin to 25 pin converter, 9 pin to RJ45 converter for the Ciscos, a couple of gender changers, an ethernet patch cable, an ethernet CROSSOVER cable.... and to top it all off, a LAPLINK cable.
Excellent! Now you need to put a 4 port USB hub in each of the Pi's USB ports so you can hook up 16 terminals so you can have a MAngband Serial party (which is a LAN party without the network :)) [Edit] xterm, gnome-terminal, stterm - whatever you're using - they're terminal EMULATORS and they're pretending to be that lovely little hardware device you have there.
I started out my career as a Pick developer (it's a database system) on a Wyse 50 in 1986. I love those terminals. You got a sub because you're one of the few people I've run across recently that knows the proper shell indicators for d-sub connectors. :D You did a great job and I'm looking forward to see what you do next. Now I'm off to go find myself a Wyse 50 or 60 without a burned screen. :)
I too started out as a Pick developer, but in 1990, and with a Wyse WY-60 which I loved (although the company had all sorts of them; 30, 50, 55, 60 & 120). We finally switched to using PCs with Terminals Emulators in about 1995/96, different times for sure.
Thanks for the guide. My wyse wy120 works now with vmware+usb serial. Fun learning to program vt100 codes. Too bad my panasonic dot matrix doesn’t print out the vt100 graphics boxes
This was a fun video. In the late 90s I couldn't wait to get away from tech like this, but now I like it from a retro aspect. The way you presented it was very entertaining.
picked up a wyse WY30 kinda randomly almost 5 years ago and i'm so glad i can finally use it! thanks sm for this :) just typed in "wyse 30" for the past so many years and couldn't find a thing 💀
I love retro tech like this. You mentioned why you like Linux and how it can connect with older devices. That's actually why I like windows too! Even on a Windows 10 machine it's crazy what you can get running. I have seen old vista devices running fine, and even DOS POINT of Sale Software! I actually live the idea of terminals they are very close to zero clients which I find cool too!
I believe I read somewhere that the WY60 keyboard did in fact use Cherry Black switches. Best choice for long term abuse in a retail POS environment and other environments where you would expect one of these to live for many years
I do believe they are Cherry Blacks. I wish I'd have done a video of the keyboard teardown when I cleaned it up- would have been useful context there! :) I'm sure I posted some photos on Twitter but I don't remember exactly when at the moment.
hahaha flashbacks, we chucked around 700 wyse 50s and 60s only about 10 years ago lol. our cio thought pcs were a fad its funny though i still spend most of my time at the terminal.
Considering that the majority of data entry is still in text format, ASCII terminals still make sense, especially for environments like warehouses, kitchens, point-of-sales systems. Anything requiring high-volume data entry really.
3 ปีที่แล้ว +1
Linux and old crap that no sane person would use, what not to love!
Thanks for the video, and the reminder of the stuff I used to use. I'm of the slightly older era where serial terminals were the norm, connected to rs232 PBX's where you'd type through your terminal which computer (usually an HP mini) you wanted to connect to. MICOM was the name of the PBX manufacturer. We had 1,500 foot serial runs between the PBX and the terminal, so we used serial line drivers (see if you can remember those). The terminals we used were HP black and white displays. I'm thinking 2621s?
Suggestion, do a video on "nomachine" software. I have a bunch of old laptops their Windoze life is over, so I use them to test and experiement with other Linux distros, media servers, etc.. I use nomachine software to remote into them. It's like VNC/RDP but works properly. :) You can go from Windows, Linux or MacOS to any of them. I use it with VMs too. FYI: I am NOT affiliated with nomachine corp at all. The software is free. They offer high end solutions for enterprise to make their money. Cheaper then trying to do a KVM or IP setup.
4:08 That's ok, they didn't generally know the difference in the early 1990s, either! lol You know, we had dozens of WYSE terminals in 2000 when I was slowly replacing them with PCs. I could have snagged one or two of them for a song. *sigh* 6:14 26 rows? Did you mean 24? Typically, terminals were 24 rows, and PCs were 25. I believe the Apple II was 24 rows, as well. 7:20 You know your DDG bangs! Good nerd! :D
Hey! Hey! Hey! As a long time Slackware user, I resent that! :) But then again, I got upset moving from System III UNIX to System V UNIX coz they messed with the ttys file then, too.
Great video. I grew up using dumb terminals. I used to manage a SMB file server using a WYSE terminal back 2001. Thank you for keep computer history alive.
05:52 Those old terminals like this Wyse were awesome. That bright green text display was so crisp and beautiful. I wonder if TMUX would work in a WYSE-55.
Great video Veronica, I can't wait for the next one! My first computing experience was actually an ADM-3A at 1200 baud, connected to a PDP-11/780, which was quite painful! :)
Fascinating, whilst not as retro as your project I have an original Chinese Pi 1 with 256MB which it needs to share with GPU. Runs headless, has SSH, Apache2 xsane server, dlna server. Despite it being an original Pi the OS is on an attached USB hard drive, the SD card just used to boot. Yes, I do have more up to date Pi devices but love the old one being my workhorse.
when I started university I had to do my Fortran programs for engineering courses on punch-cards and do indeed recall how much better life was when got access to terminals - though the editor was just a primitive line editor, well, it was better than working with punchcards
When I first got to use a terminal on an actual mini-computer, I thought this was amazing. Previously in year 11 maths, I'd had to prep all my coding on punch cards. Needless to say debugging was difficult via that medium and I got back about a half a box of fan-fold blue stripe paper when I didn't terminate my loop correctly.
Hmm, I guess I'm late to this video, but glad to have had it served up. Yes, I remember Wyse terminals from my public library (ref 2:09), but also in some of the server rooms at SGI. All amber, I think... the white is kinda nice, though! Meanwhile, at one point, a coworker and I went down a long path of exploring the "Yost Serial Device Wiring Standard" (cool thing!), which I think we thought there were flaws in, though I think we might have been wrong, and anyway, getting that going at that workplace (and my home labs, since). Fun stuff.
As an old fart who started his ill-fated life with computers using RSTS/E on a PDP-11/70 via a VT-52 terminals, I've always wanted to have a play with old school terminal, but the main thing is that if you aren't in the right place and time, they are as expensive as a whole computer these days. As I've sometimes put it, I've never hung around the right dumpsters.
"...just as nature intended!" being an 8bit kid, literally accessing the internet in the 80s from a Commodore 64 dialed in to the public library... YES! Just YES!
Well Actually, OpenRC init users... umm... like your video and subscribe to your channel, that's what they do. As someone who checked his college email from the yellowing VAX/VMS terminal in the lobby of his dorm, I thoroughly enjoyed this. Thank you.
Thank you for the video. Right now I reassemble an ADDS Regent 60 Terminal after repairing and renovating the pcb's. My current project is similar to yours. Instead of a raspberry I will use an older POS computer which supports six native rs232 ports. As an application I plan to use a homebrew addressbook software. 😁
Hi Veronica, I am trying to get a WY-520 going. Its a perfect match for my Altair-Clone. It is working I think, but I'm spooked by the many menus and settings. When it turns on, is it defaulting to some kind of output when I hit keys? I can't detect anything but I don't really know whether I am watching the correct output. This is so very basic, every information source skipped it. p.s. I had a Wyse-50 but I broke it. Thanks for the well-done TH-cam video. Barry Marshall (Australia)
I love these old terminals, my favourite was the Wyse 99GT. I used them with my amateur radio packet BBS back in the 90's. Must try this idea, I have an old Raspberry Pi lying around somewhere, but it's one of the first that came out, so not sure it'll work, but it's worth a try. I confess I don't like the Debian systems much, the command line structure is too different from the version on Fedora, which is my distro of choice (hey, if it's good enough for Linus Torvalds..!)
i cry everytime about trashing a gift, an old WYSE120 as I moved away from home, decade ago, and only wished i'd use it as a linux terminal. the keyboard was marvelous, even the screen, a clear black and white one had a perfectly sharp font. would be a perfect sidekick with my absurdly modern linux desktop. install something, chatting on IRC, etc... hell even to configure Cisco switches you need a simple thing like that, it's got a serial port? you're all good! now these are overpriced, sadly.
You can also use an (old?) PC with terminal emulation software as a terminal. But if someone wanted to do that now they could just use… a raspberry Pi. So I guess you could use one raspberry pi as a terminal (running minicom for instance) to talk to another raspberry pi as the server. Same functionality as ssh but works without the network being up. I still have the 8088 with Telix (terminal emulation software) that I used to use for dialing in to BBSes.
Bah! Retro is using non systemd based linux like Slackware on a computer that has real serial ports. Or even better plug that terminal into something cool like a VaxStation 3100 running VMS. Cheers!
Last time I dealt with this sort of thing, it was a vt100 I on loan from a friend at academic computing services and situated at my student apartment or a vt220 in the public labs. In either case, it was hooked up to either a Sun running their version of UNIX or a VAX running VMS.
One of my favorite little facts I drop frequently when talk of terminals comes up is the meaning of "TTY". You will see "TTY" a lot when dealing with terminals or terminal emulation. It stands for TeleTYpewriter. That on its own is a whole other fun rabbit hole of tech history to dive down. While the Linux "command prompt" is a terminal emulator, you could say that a physical terminal is a TeleTYpewriter emulator.
I'm very fond of reactivating old stuff and do so a lot in the RepairCafe network, where I'm active. But as the motivation is saving ressources I don't think I'll go for reusing a terminal - I'm not fond of it's energy consumption. But I might consider trying to install Linux on my old Wyse Thin Client. Or just using it with an LCD screen as originally intended.
I have a Wyse WY30 which didn't seem to have a terminal mode that was fully compatible with my getty. I found that running 'screen' in a compatible mode really helped avoid random characters locking up my terminal, plus its multiplexing is like having multiple tabs on a terminal emulator program.
Linux is a terminal-server OS, isn’t? Otherwise, if I open a bash or ssh session, these are a terminal server session (where terminal and server are in the same machine). Please Veronica, help us to understand better that and how old concept of terminal-server infrastructure is in modern Linux PC today. Thanks.
You have a strong on-camera presence and a great voice! So happy you took the dive into youTube!
Thank you so much! Love your channel! I'm excited to dive into more Linux content... there's so much to explore!
@@VeronicaExplains Happy TH-cam (almost-)anniversary!
I knew some old-school librarians that were so fast on the old school terminal opacs that you couldn't even see the screen fully refresh. The management interface was a good bit different with a lot more options. Some of the librarians and clerks would have a lot of quick keys programmed to swap between various functions. If you messed up someones quick keys, you were reading the stacks for lost books (like being sent to the library clerk dungeon). Watching skilled terminal opac wizardry was a sight to behold. Something died the day we went to GUI. Many of the wizards never were able to fully adapt to it. - Nice video, Thanks!
Awesome video, keep doing this!
qué bueno verte por aquí!
Pero antes. Un mesaje de nuestro sponsor
Excellent video! Love your sense of humor and presentation style.
Thank you SO MUCH!
@@VeronicaExplains I love how when something is going to take a while, you play with your Bop It.
Honestly this was an absolutely astounding video, please keep doing more!
Great vudei! I used to prefer terminals to GUI. I started with PDP11's and later with screen and tmux I could do so much from a terminal. I really enjoyed X-Windows terminals from NCD, etc That was the best of all worlds. Running an office with Sun Microsystems servers to Xterms and serial terminals was amazing. So much less admin work compared to everyone having their own Windoze PC. Thanks again. Would be funny to get an old Xterminal running with Linux. :)
Veronica, you took me back to the 80s/90s when I spent about 13 years working with Wyse50 terminals and various versions of UNIX/Xenix/HP-UX.
I did field support for a multi-national in Latin America, setting up UNIX systems, modems, etc. Burnt my fingers soldering cables lots of times making serial cables :)
The Wyse terminal's programmable function keys were a real revelation to me and I made good use of them to speed up data entry.
I ended up traveling with short serial cables which converted from DB-9 to DB-25 or DB-15, male to female, female to female, etc because I never knew what I would meet in a particular country.
And, of course, different systems had different pinouts, so I would always need to have photocopies of the pinouts for each system.
There's a wonderful book called the C programmer's guide to serial communications by Joe Campbell which goes into wonderful detail about anything and everything to do with serial communications, the ASCII character set, the various protocols, UARTs, modems and all kind of serial stuff.
This used to be my life on a daily basis.
One would think that using these terminals would limit productivity, but I remember having 100 users on a HP PA-RISC system with a 48MHz CPU, 64MB RAM and nobody ever complained about speed.
We ran everything on that system - email, word processing, spreadsheets, database applications, program development, etc.
Those old systems were remarkably efficient and productive.
For heads down data entry, there was nothing faster than a green screen terminal. You never moved your hands from the keyboard to click a mouse, so you could get up to high speeds for data entry. I've even seen people punch data faster than the screens could keep up without losing their rhythm, which looks like magic the first time you see it.
Thank you for this comment! I totally agree, these terminals are remarkably efficient. It's really something.
Character-mode terminals were resource hogs: that HP server had to immediately react to every key pressed by every user. _Much_ more efficient were block-mode terminals like the IBM 3270: you filled in a screen full of data, pressed the XMIT key, and only then did the computer notice you.
That way 100 users had good response on a 2 MIPS system with only 6MB RAM, while also running batch jobs.
Great Freshman video! We will be watching your TH-cam career with great interest.
Linux is awesome, and so are you
Please upload more videos about Linux stuff. I really love this one.
Wow! Memories! I remember having a little bag of RS-232 connectors and cables and null modems that I carried with me on service and delivery calls.
You know you're a field support GOD when you've got your serial cable, null-modem cable, 9 pin to 25 pin converter, 9 pin to RJ45 converter for the Ciscos, a couple of gender changers, an ethernet patch cable, an ethernet CROSSOVER cable.... and to top it all off, a LAPLINK cable.
Cool, this remind me early 90's when I was a UNIX programmer using a terminal like this one. Greetings from Brazil.
This is a great first video! keep it up! Also enjoyed the obligatory clickiness demo 😎👍
reminds me of Ben Eater's videos
It's so frustrating that good mechanical keyboards used to be cheap and standard, but now they are extremely expensive "enthusiast" products.
As demand rises, so does the price
Ok, that was fun. Also, I love the catchprase "Linux is awesome and so are you". I might be in the market for t-shirts.
The “just as nature intended” made me lol. Great video! Looking forward to more.
Thank you!!!
You and me, both.
@@VeronicaExplains There WAS also a 132 character mode on Wyse terminals :)
I would like to watch the Wyse video as well as NULL modem cable videos.
For us folks born after 2000, this is beyond comprehensible !
Congrats on the discovery!
Excellent! Now you need to put a 4 port USB hub in each of the Pi's USB ports so you can hook up 16 terminals so you can have a MAngband Serial party (which is a LAN party without the network :))
[Edit] xterm, gnome-terminal, stterm - whatever you're using - they're terminal EMULATORS and they're pretending to be that lovely little hardware device you have there.
I started out my career as a Pick developer (it's a database system) on a Wyse 50 in 1986. I love those terminals. You got a sub because you're one of the few people I've run across recently that knows the proper shell indicators for d-sub connectors. :D You did a great job and I'm looking forward to see what you do next. Now I'm off to go find myself a Wyse 50 or 60 without a burned screen. :)
I too started out as a Pick developer, but in 1990, and with a Wyse WY-60 which I loved (although the company had all sorts of them; 30, 50, 55, 60 & 120). We finally switched to using PCs with Terminals Emulators in about 1995/96, different times for sure.
@@elyuw These days, AccuTerm is my weapon of choice for doing Pick development. It's a shame that Rocket got their filthy claws on it.
Part of my job is still this.. in 2024 😢
Just a quick reminder to my fellow viewers:
_HTML is a programming language, you cowards_
The jokes in the video were funny, especially the one about people who know init systems
My first paid gig was COBOL using a Wyse terminal over RS-232 to a TI mini. Thank you for the memories!
Cool! I currently maintain a COBOL program originally written for a TI mini. It's always exciting!
wtf
This was like watching a cyberpunk tv report inside a 90s hacker movie
t was interesting
Thanks for the guide. My wyse wy120 works now with vmware+usb serial.
Fun learning to program vt100 codes.
Too bad my panasonic dot matrix doesn’t print out the vt100 graphics boxes
I hope one day I find a woman like Veronica, but straight and European :)
this is a great video! so many good jokes in here! subscribed! 🐧👍
Awesome Veronica, you gotta a new Viewer From Brazil!
This was a fun video. In the late 90s I couldn't wait to get away from tech like this, but now I like it from a retro aspect. The way you presented it was very entertaining.
Terminals are so much fun now that they aren't necessary! :)
picked up a wyse WY30 kinda randomly almost 5 years ago and i'm so glad i can finally use it! thanks sm for this :) just typed in "wyse 30" for the past so many years and couldn't find a thing 💀
Glad it was helpful!!
Oh my word! I've just discovered another corner of geek heaven! I love old tech and Linux.
Great video, Veronica.
You look like Loonette from the Big comfy Couch. (Its a compliment) My dad has a terminal in his basement and I can't wait to try this out!
That's one of the nicest things anyone's ever said to me!
I love retro tech like this. You mentioned why you like Linux and how it can connect with older devices. That's actually why I like windows too! Even on a Windows 10 machine it's crazy what you can get running. I have seen old vista devices running fine, and even DOS POINT of Sale Software! I actually live the idea of terminals they are very close to zero clients which I find cool too!
I believe I read somewhere that the WY60 keyboard did in fact use Cherry Black switches. Best choice for long term abuse in a retail POS environment and other environments where you would expect one of these to live for many years
I do believe they are Cherry Blacks. I wish I'd have done a video of the keyboard teardown when I cleaned it up- would have been useful context there! :) I'm sure I posted some photos on Twitter but I don't remember exactly when at the moment.
hahaha flashbacks, we chucked around 700 wyse 50s and 60s only about 10 years ago lol. our cio thought pcs were a fad
its funny though i still spend most of my time at the terminal.
Considering that the majority of data entry is still in text format, ASCII terminals still make sense, especially for environments like warehouses, kitchens, point-of-sales systems. Anything requiring high-volume data entry really.
Linux and old crap that no sane person would use, what not to love!
Thanks for the video, and the reminder of the stuff I used to use. I'm of the slightly older era where serial terminals were the norm, connected to rs232 PBX's where you'd type through your terminal which computer (usually an HP mini) you wanted to connect to. MICOM was the name of the PBX manufacturer. We had 1,500 foot serial runs between the PBX and the terminal, so we used serial line drivers (see if you can remember those). The terminals we used were HP black and white displays. I'm thinking 2621s?
I loved it! Thank you for the video!
I'm glad you enjoyed it! Hoping to bust out the terminal again in another video soon!
Veronica, you are fund to watch explaining Linux and anything else. thanks
Thank you!
I like how explainable and approachable you make Linux. Keep up the great work!
I think I binged all your videos now. Ahh all is well in the world. You’re awesome!!
Hopefully you feel it was time well spent! :P
@@VeronicaExplains loved every second of it. Huge fan, can’t wait for more.
Do I need an old terminal hooked up to a raspberry pi to feel whole inside? Yes, yes I do!
So that's what my terminal emulator emulates
Way to go!, I did the same with an Amiga 1000 in 1986! Thanks for the video, it shows the love and passion you have to reach beyond in tech.
Suggestion, do a video on "nomachine" software. I have a bunch of old laptops their Windoze life is over, so I use them to test and experiement with other Linux distros, media servers, etc.. I use nomachine software to remote into them. It's like VNC/RDP but works properly. :) You can go from Windows, Linux or MacOS to any of them. I use it with VMs too. FYI: I am NOT affiliated with nomachine corp at all. The software is free. They offer high end solutions for enterprise to make their money. Cheaper then trying to do a KVM or IP setup.
That is an interesting idea!
@@VeronicaExplains I just watched your Remmina video. I wasn't aware of it and it supports the NX protocol of nomachine as well. Regards
This is super rad. Thanks for this
You are great! Keep the videos coming - show us whatever you like.
takes me back to the good ol bbs days :)
4:08 That's ok, they didn't generally know the difference in the early 1990s, either! lol
You know, we had dozens of WYSE terminals in 2000 when I was slowly replacing them with PCs.
I could have snagged one or two of them for a song.
*sigh*
6:14 26 rows? Did you mean 24? Typically, terminals were 24 rows, and PCs were 25. I believe the Apple II was 24 rows, as well.
7:20 You know your DDG bangs! Good nerd! :D
Awesome video, keep doing this!
The jab at the non-systemd purists was hilarious. 🤣 Great video. Subscribed!
Glad you liked it! Thank you!
Hey! Hey! Hey!
As a long time Slackware user, I resent that! :)
But then again, I got upset moving from System III UNIX to System V UNIX coz they messed with the ttys file then, too.
Great video. I grew up using dumb terminals. I used to manage a SMB file server using a WYSE terminal back 2001. Thank you for keep computer history alive.
Unlike Clarissa, Veronica DOES explain it all
That was possibly my favorite show growing up!!
05:52 Those old terminals like this Wyse were awesome. That bright green text display was so crisp and beautiful. I wonder if TMUX would work in a WYSE-55.
why shouldn't it work? it runs on the server, not on the terminal
Great video Veronica, I can't wait for the next one! My first computing experience was actually an ADM-3A at 1200 baud, connected to a PDP-11/780, which was quite painful! :)
not long after the moon landing i guess
"HTML is a programming language, you cowards"
I mean, if you think about it... Isn't _anything_ a programming language?
Linux is awesome... and so is this video.
Really enjoyed this, can't wait for the next one and keep the sarcasm rolling!! :-D
Nice! One of my biggest regrets is that I didn't rescue a couple'a WY-50s from the skip (dumpster) back in the late 80s.
So this was really good
Fascinating, whilst not as retro as your project I have an original Chinese Pi 1 with 256MB which it needs to share with GPU. Runs headless, has SSH, Apache2 xsane server, dlna server. Despite it being an original Pi the OS is on an attached USB hard drive, the SD card just used to boot. Yes, I do have more up to date Pi devices but love the old one being my workhorse.
when I started university I had to do my Fortran programs for engineering courses on punch-cards and do indeed recall how much better life was when got access to terminals - though the editor was just a primitive line editor, well, it was better than working with punchcards
I dig your videos Veronica. Just came across your channel yesterday. I subscribed. Please continue to make more content. You are very interesting.
When I first got to use a terminal on an actual mini-computer, I thought this was amazing. Previously in year 11 maths, I'd had to prep all my coding on punch cards. Needless to say debugging was difficult via that medium and I got back about a half a box of fan-fold blue stripe paper when I didn't terminate my loop correctly.
Linux noob here...love the settle down arch bros comment! Good stuff & thanks for the video!
Hmm, I guess I'm late to this video, but glad to have had it served up. Yes, I remember Wyse terminals from my public library (ref 2:09), but also in some of the server rooms at SGI. All amber, I think... the white is kinda nice, though! Meanwhile, at one point, a coworker and I went down a long path of exploring the "Yost Serial Device Wiring Standard" (cool thing!), which I think we thought there were flaws in, though I think we might have been wrong, and anyway, getting that going at that workplace (and my home labs, since). Fun stuff.
As an old fart who started his ill-fated life with computers using RSTS/E on a PDP-11/70 via a VT-52 terminals, I've always wanted to have a play with old school terminal, but the main thing is that if you aren't in the right place and time, they are as expensive as a whole computer these days. As I've sometimes put it, I've never hung around the right dumpsters.
This is an awesome video! Thank you for putting it together. Definitely interested in more content like this (and subscribed)!
Thank you! Very much appreciated!
Having gone to college in the 80s, we had paper TTYs between cards and terminals 🙄
awesome! (I have installed/configured terminals for years ) brings back a lot of memories :) thanks :)
It may be intresting a video about text-mode Linux tools to do thing that usually you do graphically (web browsing, tweet, mail and so..
I would love to see a vid about the history of Wyse.
I've got a bunch of thin clients from them in my basement- I'm imagining something could be coming at some point. :)
What a perfect ending with the sound of a good old power-off switch we all (some?) remember from our childhoods :)
here's the deal: for pure "man/machine" interfacing, a "dumb terminal" is optimal.
"...just as nature intended!" being an 8bit kid, literally accessing the internet in the 80s from a Commodore 64 dialed in to the public library... YES! Just YES!
Well Actually, OpenRC init users... umm... like your video and subscribe to your channel, that's what they do. As someone who checked his college email from the yellowing VAX/VMS terminal in the lobby of his dorm, I thoroughly enjoyed this. Thank you.
Thank you for the video. Right now I reassemble an ADDS Regent 60 Terminal after repairing and renovating the pcb's. My current project is similar to yours. Instead of a raspberry I will use an older POS computer which supports six native rs232 ports. As an application I plan to use a homebrew addressbook software. 😁
Hi Veronica, I am trying to get a WY-520 going. Its a perfect match for my Altair-Clone.
It is working I think, but I'm spooked by the many menus and settings. When it turns on, is it defaulting to some kind of output when I hit keys? I can't detect anything but I don't really know whether I am watching the correct output. This is so very basic, every information source skipped it. p.s. I had a Wyse-50 but I broke it. Thanks for the well-done TH-cam video.
Barry Marshall (Australia)
I love these old terminals, my favourite was the Wyse 99GT. I used them with my amateur radio packet BBS back in the 90's. Must try this idea, I have an old Raspberry Pi lying around somewhere, but it's one of the first that came out, so not sure it'll work, but it's worth a try. I confess I don't like the Debian systems much, the command line structure is too different from the version on Fedora, which is my distro of choice (hey, if it's good enough for Linus Torvalds..!)
That's awesome!!!
i cry everytime about trashing a gift, an old WYSE120 as I moved away from home, decade ago, and only wished i'd use it as a linux terminal. the keyboard was marvelous, even the screen, a clear black and white one had a perfectly sharp font.
would be a perfect sidekick with my absurdly modern linux desktop. install something, chatting on IRC, etc... hell even to configure Cisco switches you need a simple thing like that, it's got a serial port? you're all good!
now these are overpriced, sadly.
Oh yes Lynx on Wyse!
You're awesome too
"[it is]" I giggled.
I think you should name the terminal "Mr. Owl" since you tweeted from a WYSE terminal;)
You can also use an (old?) PC with terminal emulation software as a terminal. But if someone wanted to do that now they could just use… a raspberry Pi. So I guess you could use one raspberry pi as a terminal (running minicom for instance) to talk to another raspberry pi as the server. Same functionality as ssh but works without the network being up.
I still have the 8088 with Telix (terminal emulation software) that I used to use for dialing in to BBSes.
It's a raspi, why don't you take advantage of the GPIO pins, but a bunch of USB adapters?
Great vid.
I’m an old dos/unix guy from BITD.
I famously said in 1986 Windows was a fad 😂😂
Bah! Retro is using non systemd based linux like Slackware on a computer that has real serial ports. Or even better plug that terminal into something cool like a VaxStation 3100 running VMS.
Cheers!
how about trying find some old DEC monitors like the vt100's...
Last time I dealt with this sort of thing, it was a vt100 I on loan from a friend at academic computing services and situated at my student apartment or a vt220 in the public labs. In either case, it was hooked up to either a Sun running their version of UNIX or a VAX running VMS.
Thanks for this - I'm going to attempt it on a Wang 2336 DW. Subscribed.
One of my favorite little facts I drop frequently when talk of terminals comes up is the meaning of "TTY". You will see "TTY" a lot when dealing with terminals or terminal emulation. It stands for TeleTYpewriter. That on its own is a whole other fun rabbit hole of tech history to dive down. While the Linux "command prompt" is a terminal emulator, you could say that a physical terminal is a TeleTYpewriter emulator.
WOW! Linux on a Raspberry Pi and a VT-100 monochrome terminal! You're right, linux is awesome. And so are you.
I'm very fond of reactivating old stuff and do so a lot in the RepairCafe network, where I'm active. But as the motivation is saving ressources I don't think I'll go for reusing a terminal - I'm not fond of it's energy consumption. But I might consider trying to install Linux on my old Wyse Thin Client. Or just using it with an LCD screen as originally intended.
I have a Wyse WY30 which didn't seem to have a terminal mode that was fully compatible with my getty. I found that running 'screen' in a compatible mode really helped avoid random characters locking up my terminal, plus its multiplexing is like having multiple tabs on a terminal emulator program.
Next step, convert an old CRT display into a terminal with a programmed stm32 😂
Awesome video!
I remember using one of these terminals in the early 90s, hooked up to a 80386 PC running Xenix!
Unfortunately I go back to paper tape, punch and harcopy TTY. A glass terminal was a new and shiny beacon to modern TTL technology.
Linux is a terminal-server OS, isn’t? Otherwise, if I open a bash or ssh session, these are a terminal server session (where terminal and server are in the same machine). Please Veronica, help us to understand better that and how old concept of terminal-server infrastructure is in modern Linux PC today. Thanks.