I did sort of the opposite of this by buying a real VT100 on eBay, restoring it to working order, and mounting a Raspberry Pi Zero W inside it that emulates a PDP-11. So instead of an emulated terminal with a real computer, it’s a real terminal with an emulated computer.
(In case you’re wondering, I had no sane reason to do this.)
I bought a vt510 and hooked it up to my raspberry pi. My intention was to get some kind of VAX VMS OS on there, but as i played around on linux i realised something.
It really really sucks.
I had been dreaming of such a set up since i had been at the centre for computing history[1] and got so much nostalgia for the old DEC VMS setup they had. There is so much emotion brough back from just touching those machines, from the way your muscle memory kicks in as soon as you put your hands over the keyboard.
I was so damn excited for this.
but it was awful, the lag was the big one, but this wasn't from my set-up, this actually was how it was, the previously suppressed memory came back, sat in the computer lab at college, that lag was there - but yeah after years of iterm2, tmux and the advancements in the cli space - going back to vt510 really really sucked.
But it was a pretty horrible experience[2], and really affected me actually, it made me think a lot about nostalgia and how we remember the past.
It's prerelase and I haven't pushed the experimental graphical interface yet but you can actually use it, configure it and run everything using a TUI mapper that renders the text framebuffer on your terminal.
There's one or two memory mapper bugs that seem to break multi session mode but those are somewhat obscure and will probably require some experimentation with real hardware to solve.
Oh man, that brought a memory! I learned C and made my first "bigger" steps in programming on VT320 and VT420 connected to one of the Sun boxes. I'm still fond of that amber glow.
I wasn't even born back then but I love those amber crts. I had the luck of finding a Zenith ZVM-1220-EA composite display in pristine condition on ebay (I live in Germany where it's way harder to find nice amber crts) and it looks fantastic.
But there is one thing, the noise. I very much hear that super high pitched sound and it makes running it just as a 2nd monitor almost impossible.
Also I haven't quite found a good way of integrating it into my setup yet, raspi+tmux+ssh is the easiest but it'd be much cooler having it as an actual 2nd display.
Do you have more literature on the SSU? Do you know if the roms tolerate more than two sessions being available (or can be trivially patched to support more?)
The SSU feature is woefully underdocumented and the patent gives you _some_ information, but it's missing all of the details. I hope to break this part out into a project of its own.
I am 100% certain a VT420 will never be able to support more than two sessions, as the ROM explicitly has a ton of checks that look like "if session1 { ... } else { ... }". Unfortunately your best bet here would be putting a more advanced terminal multiplexer behind your VT420 and then making the F4 key a full passthrough (disabling the native session switcher).
I had a bunch of these VT100 animation files and found those and more on this site. Things like Star Trek and fireworks. I first saw them in 1991 but modern terminals play them too quickly and instead of going on for 15 seconds it instantly finishes and you just see the final scene.
Is there any way to slow things down in a terminal?
Ahh the reassuring amber glow, the faint smell of burning dust, a gentle patter of keystrokes, punctuated by the occasional muted bell tone and the gentle rustle of fanfold papers. The night before project submission in terminal room 11B6.
Readit News
(In case you’re wondering, I had no sane reason to do this.)
I bought a vt510 and hooked it up to my raspberry pi. My intention was to get some kind of VAX VMS OS on there, but as i played around on linux i realised something.
It really really sucks.
I had been dreaming of such a set up since i had been at the centre for computing history[1] and got so much nostalgia for the old DEC VMS setup they had. There is so much emotion brough back from just touching those machines, from the way your muscle memory kicks in as soon as you put your hands over the keyboard.
I was so damn excited for this.
but it was awful, the lag was the big one, but this wasn't from my set-up, this actually was how it was, the previously suppressed memory came back, sat in the computer lab at college, that lag was there - but yeah after years of iterm2, tmux and the advancements in the cli space - going back to vt510 really really sucked.
But it was a pretty horrible experience[2], and really affected me actually, it made me think a lot about nostalgia and how we remember the past.
---
[1]https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/
[2] please, these things are relative, it wasn't that bad, it just kinda sucked
https://github.com/mmastrac/blaze
It's prerelase and I haven't pushed the experimental graphical interface yet but you can actually use it, configure it and run everything using a TUI mapper that renders the text framebuffer on your terminal.
There's one or two memory mapper bugs that seem to break multi session mode but those are somewhat obscure and will probably require some experimentation with real hardware to solve.
But there is one thing, the noise. I very much hear that super high pitched sound and it makes running it just as a 2nd monitor almost impossible.
Also I haven't quite found a good way of integrating it into my setup yet, raspi+tmux+ssh is the easiest but it'd be much cooler having it as an actual 2nd display.
Do you have more literature on the SSU? Do you know if the roms tolerate more than two sessions being available (or can be trivially patched to support more?)
I am 100% certain a VT420 will never be able to support more than two sessions, as the ROM explicitly has a ton of checks that look like "if session1 { ... } else { ... }". Unfortunately your best bet here would be putting a more advanced terminal multiplexer behind your VT420 and then making the F4 key a full passthrough (disabling the native session switcher).
Is there any way to slow things down in a terminal?
http://artscene.textfiles.com/vt100/
EDIT:
I just found this command from here and it's awesome to see these after 30 years!
https://www.reddit.com/r/commandline/comments/cbp3eo/playing...
cat "/path/to/file.vt" | pv -q -L 2000
2024 (40 points, 16 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40590353
2020 (117 points, 30 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23662907
[1] http://adb.arcadeitalia.net/dettaglio_mame.php?game_name=vt1...
https://terminals-wiki.org/wiki/index.php/Ann_Arbor_Ambassad...
https://vt100.net/annarbor/aaa-ug/section1.html
http://madrona.ca/e/aaa/index.html