18 Jul
2024
18 Jul
'24
12:20 a.m.
Hi all,
Some time ago I dived into ed and tried programming with it a bit. It
was an interesting experience but I feel like the scrolling
visual terminal can't properly emulate the paper terminal. You can't do
rip out a printout and put it next to you, scribble on it, etc.
I'd like to try replicating the experience more closely but I'm not
interested in acquiring collector's items or complex mechanical
hardware. There don't seem to be contemporary equivalents of the TI
Silent 700 so I've been looking at are standalone printing devices to
combine with a keyboard. But the best I can find is line printing,
which is unsuitable for input.
Any suggestions?
Sijmen
18 Jul
18 Jul
1:01 a.m.
Sure, cheap 9 or 24-pin dot matrix printers are still sold new, and you can
find them at thrift stores pretty easily. I'd take something like an
Arduino and add a PC keyboard and dot matrix printer. You can emulate
something as the limited functionality as an ASR33, but since that is Upper
Case only and technical 10CPS, I recommend either emulating the ASR37 or
the DEC LA120. I've forgotten the specs on the former, but it had some
interesting tricks that programs like nroff(1) know about. The latter
could print as fast as 120 cps, although it could talk and buffer the
input data to be printed at much faster speeds and actually did some smart
tricks like printing backward if that was going to be faster
ᐧ
On Wed, Jul 17, 2024 at 2:21 PM Sijmen J. Mulder <ik(a)sjmulder.nl> wrote:
Hi all,
Some time ago I dived into ed and tried programming with it a bit. It
was an interesting experience but I feel like the scrolling
visual terminal can't properly emulate the paper terminal. You can't do
rip out a printout and put it next to you, scribble on it, etc.
I'd like to try replicating the experience more closely but I'm not
interested in acquiring collector's items or complex mechanical
hardware. There don't seem to be contemporary equivalents of the TI
Silent 700 so I've been looking at are standalone printing devices to
combine with a keyboard. But the best I can find is line printing,
which is unsuitable for input.
Any suggestions?
Sijmen
28 Jul
28 Jul
3:10 a.m.
On Jul 17, 2024, at 11:20 AM, Sijmen J. Mulder <ik(a)sjmulder.nl> wrote:
I'd like to try replicating the experience more closely but I'm not
interested in acquiring collector's items or complex mechanical
hardware.
Are you sure? :) A DECwriter IV or a DEC Correspondent makes for a *great* printing
terminal about the size of an old-style electric typewriter, and ribbons are still
available for them. (One of their advantages is that they’re impact printers that use
plain paper and an inked ribbon. Though it’s not like thermal FAX paper such as the
portable Silent 700 uses is hard to come by…)
They’re still large and somewhat complex mechanical hardware, but they’re at least
desktop-sized rather than floor-standing, and the Correspondent is even “portable…” I was
actually going to take my Correspondent to Toorcamp this year, before I realized I didn’t
have a new ribbon for it and my old one was out.
You could probably also throw together something with an Arduino or Raspberry Pi, a serial
printer, and a PS/2 keyboard to get the feel of a printing terminal. It’d probably be a
fun and straightforward project, too since it’s just a couple of serial ports and a state
machine, and you could make it as simple or featureful as you want.
-- Chris
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days inactive
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2 comments
3 participants
participants (3)
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Chris Hanson -
Clem Cole -
Sijmen J. Mulder