OFC one can use a #TTY and #VT100 as #Terminal but those are local, not over the #LAN or #Internet...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XLZ4Z8LpEE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob7cEzXLxXU

What was the release price / MSRP of the DEC VT100 in 1978?
#terminal #terminals #DEC #VT100
The most I can find is $1550 but that was in 1980.

When I began using computers, I was practically chained to a #VT100 terminal. It had a black screen. But of course!

Then came the #GUI revolution. In those early days, white background was in vogue. It livened up the screen, especially compared to the stodgy old VT100. And at the dawn of the #Web era, UI was in shambles, but everyone stuck to the now-traditional white background.

Of late, though, desktop and webtop GUIs have gone dark, very dark. Even the IDEs now have gone to the dark side. And I rather like it; it reminds me of my youth and it's easier on the eyes.

But try as I may, I can't read news, documentation (especially ones that contains mathematics), and other lengthy text against a black background. I need the paper white for that.🤷‍♂️

#telnet #telehack using #LILYGO #TTGO #VGA32 1.4 w/ #FabGL NetworkTerminal #VT100 #emulator w/ #WiFi ( #ESP32 ) improved by @mobluse. #educational #terminal #commandline #game https://youtube.com/live/D1olWSPX-cc?feature=share
#YouTube
#video #electronics #retrocomputing #Arduino

A Look Back at Computer Displays https://hackaday.com/2023/05/21/a-look-back-at-computer-displays/ #Retrocomputing #retrocomputing #display #vt100

A Look Back at Computer Displays - These days, our video cards are actually as powerful as yesterday’s supercomputer ... - https://hackaday.com/2023/05/21/a-look-back-at-computer-displays/ #retrocomputing #display #vt100

Simple things can be complex:
Reading a single key event from the keyboard is quite hard. Standard C and OS settings
will buffer key events until a line is complete #LDISC.
And special keys like arrows or ESC have native non-standard encodings like VKEY on #Windows, #VT100 escape codes on #POSIX, AKEYCODE on #Android, multibyte codes from the #BIOS layer or scan codes from #UEFI or the hardware.

But it's fun to learn about what's really going on beyond libraries like `ncurses`.

@bastetfurry @EeveeEuphoria And before you ask, yes I did have a chance to hands-on it with it's attached #VT100 terminal...

@graay give up fellas - I’m moving straight to the shorts, long socks while programming on the #DECWriter 2 terminal

#VT100 / #straya 🇦🇺🦘

More computing history…

#DEC #VT100, VT125, etc., terminals (and #terminal emulators) live on:

zsh% printf "\e[95;1mDEC VT\e[0m\n"

Above is a zsh command that sends a control sequence setting text color and bold, some text, and a sequence to revert the display. (VT100, VT101, etc.,
didn’t have color, but other old VT terminals including VT125 and VT241 did.)

Add in a bell (\a, or \007) for audio accompaniment, too.

There’s not a whole lot in IT that has been carried over largely unmodified for most of forty years, but DEC VT / ANSI / ECMA escape and control sequences are among the subset of long-surviving tech.

One of the subtle clever bits hiding in plain sight here: the escape and control sequences have an architected format, which means a properly-functioning terminal or terminal emulator can detect and ignore unrecognized escape and control sequences. This means older terminals can respond sorta-kinda correctly to new (and unknown) sequences.

Being pre-ANSI terminals, Tektronix 4014 and ilk lacked that unrecognized-sequences -get-ignored capability, which meant that erroneously sending ANSI sequences to a Tek 4014 would show a mix of output and rubbish.

There are subtleties here, too. Sending a DEC VT terminal the power-up self-test (DECTST) was an early denial-of-service (#DOS) attack, too. The following repeats the POST until the VT power is cycled:

ESC [ 2 ; 9 y

DECTST is why #VAX / #VMS MAIL (and now #OpenVMS) expunged escape sequences.

Canonical VT source: https://vt100.net — also see the vttest testing tool that is available there, too.

@schoedland @f2k1de @manawyrm @33dBm nope.

Die #Deskside-Version mit Platz für nen #VT100 oben drauf in der Größe von nem Mini-Kühlschrank... [ca. 21HE]

@SETIEric @thomasfuchs The vast majority of #BBS calls I made were 8N1. I think the only 7E1 stuff I connected to were larger systems like my college #IBM mainframe (using a special 3270 terminal emulator instead of more common #DEC #VT100 or #ANSI, natch).

YES! I've been looking for a serial terminal with the "right" iconic look, and I finally have one!

Say hello to my Micro-Term ERGO 301. She's VT-100 compatible with a number of features that didn't come standard on the VT-100.

#retrocomputing #terminal #vt100

An actual sentence I spoke out loud to other humans at work today:
"Tomorrow my VT100 compatible serial terminal arrives, so that I can play games on an emulated PDP-11 the way they were meant to be played."

I feel like I've arrived in a dark place, but it also feels like home, so.

#retrocomputing #retrogaming #vt100 #PDP11

Reminiscing—Ronan Zwa (age 12) #programming a Display-O-Tron #RaspberryPi HAT via the DEC #VT100 terminal.

#CPM is becoming a lot more usable on the #Apple2 #FujiNet, thanks to a #VT100 terminal emulator. In this video, I am using WordStar 3.3 and Turbo Pascal, and finally showing a full assembly of 8080 fig-FORTH 1.1 to show emulation speed. #RunCPM solves all the problems of running #CPM on an #Apple2, and it's fast. https://youtu.be/SeR-mm1IQ2A

That #VT100 #emulation also works in #termux. In the attached image you can see a #shell #command that echos "Hello, world" in green.

A discussion (linked below) of serial line #break signals reminded me of an era of #computinghistory / #retrocomputing when those break signals were far more common...

A serial line break signal is effectively a serial line framing error. The bits aren't where they should be, and the clocking bits are wrong. As with other things in computing, sometimes errors are (re)used for other not-error purposes.

Many old serial terminals such as the #DEC #VT100 terminal had a dedicated break key, and there was the F5 key on a #VT220 terminal LK201 keyboard, and this key generated and sent the framing error. The break.

Why deliberately send an error?

Because a cheap #UART chip in the serial port hardware could easily detect that framing error.

A UART that could detect the arrival of a specific serial line character, say ^P to perform some action, cost rather more. And vendors of lower-end servers tended to prefer lower-end parts.

Which meant that some inexpensive computer servers—inexpensive servers for the 1980s and 1990s era, that is—used a cheap UART for their console control port—a console serial line allowed server management by serial line—and which meant the server could detect and use the break to interrupt the server processing, such as halting a stuck operating system.

This then also meant that an errant break on the console could halt the server.

And of course a DEC VT terminal and various other serial terminals also tended to generate framing errors on first power up. Not just when the break key was pressed.

Which then halted the server.

Adding more complexity to this console break usage, some operating systems (including #VAX/#VMS and #OpenVMS) also used break to defeat password-grabbing apps.

Yes, password-grabbing apps have been around for a long time. Well before the era of Control-Alt-Delete, another means to thwart a password-grabbing app

You'd enter a break, or the C-A-D, and the logged in session would be terminated.

Usage which then caused the very obvious problem for a serial console of course, just as soon as somebody entered a break on the serial console line.

With some systems, you could continue a halted system if you entered the continue command quickly enough. If not, welcome to a server reboot and grumpy users.

In a more recent era, terminals and terminal emulators and keyboards generally lack break keys. So either the terminal emulator needs a break function in its menus or some other chord, or you'll need some other approach when using the so-called secure server login feature (this feature has largely disappeared, given telnet (boo!) ssh (yay!) logins get a new session), or to trigger a halt on a console with a break-expecting UART.

Now if you've been following along, maybe a rather more baudy tale has occurred to you: a serial line framing error can also be generated by changing the terminal setting for the serial line speed. Switch speeds, press a few characters, reset the speed back to the correct value, and you should be looking at the aftermath of a break signal.

Sending ^P to a console—for those old VAX and ilk that expect a ^P—to halt the server is just far too easy.

But switching serial speeds to trigger a halt... works. Sometimes when you don't want it to.

http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2022/12/25/tty/

Merry Christmas 🎄🎁✨

@0x29aFi

#MerryChristmas2020
#ascii
#art
#text
#animation
#retrocomputing
#vt100
#terminal
#shell

Since #DarlekZone no longer seems to be available, I've moved to diode.zone for hosting my video content (so I don't spam #OldBytes)

So here we go, this is my first video:

A little ASCII / VT100 shooter game demo written in Hi-Tech C on CP/M

https://diode.zone/w/8QBZ7mqHggoDaBXW3STnYD

#RC2014
#VT100
#CPM
#GameDemo
#DiodeZone
#PeerTube