MeeGo, Zero To VT320 In Seventeen Seconds 150
muirhead writes "Installing MeeGo on an Eee PC 1000 netbook is quick, slick, and easy. The user interface is colorful and stylish with many quirky animations. MeeGo's features are easy to discover and it is fast and responsive. Underneath it all though there is still just a netbook. That means it's got a display screen that has no significant weight behind it. That means typing on an undersized keyboard that has no life. All of these undesirable features can, however, be fixed by adding 9kg (~20lbs) of VT320 video terminal."
We laugh at your puny VT320 (Score:5, Interesting)
That's not hooking a classic terminal to a netbook. This [aetherltd.com] is hooking a classic terminal to a netbook. (More pictures. [aetherltd.com])
How about some graphics... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'll be impressed when I see a VT330 or VT340 showing a graphical web browser -- heck, you could go back as far as a VT125 to get monochrome graphics...Not that sending bitmaps over serial would be fun, but modern vector graphics might be..altered..to something ReGIS compatible. That'd be a cool hack.
Neat to see a VT320 going again though, anyway -- been ages since I've seen one fired up.
Terminals on an Apple IIGS (Score:2, Interesting)
I remember borrowing an old Wyse terminal from work and hooking it up to my Apple IIGS running GNO/ME (GNO Multitasking Environment. Check here: http://www.hypermall.com/companies/procyon/gnome.html [hypermall.com]).
It's kind of cool that all this still works in current-day Linux. There's not many dumb terminals around any more for sure unless you're using an IBM Mainframe I guess. I suspect they still use 3270's.
Re:Sigh, I just threw out my VT320 (Score:5, Interesting)
Thinking about your post makes me feel even older. When I was in college the "new" terminals were VT-100. The lab was open 24 hours a day because there weren't enough terminals to go around. For those who knew where to look, there were a few VT-52s hiding in relative obscurity.
Granted, the VAX had less power than a Mac mini, but it also had reliability that modern systems can't match.
Re:Sigh, I just threw out my VT320 (Score:5, Interesting)
Granted, the VAX had less power than a Mac mini, but it also had reliability that modern systems can't match.
In my previous job we ran PDP 11/84s and 11/83s, VAX 11/750s and later various alphas. The PDPs running RSX11M had the greatest feeling of stability I have seen. You could get back to a system after a year and find it in exactly the same state you had left it. The architecture of RSX probably helped. Dynamic memory is discouraged. Many applications are effectively built into the kernel.
I log into machines over RS-232 daily. (Score:3, Interesting)
But yes, serial console is awesome. Although not awesome enough to write an article about.
People really need to learn that "D" subminiature connectors are not inherently serial or parallel. A DB-25 with RS-232 on it is still RS-232. Nothing parallel about it, apart from the fact that a lot of printer cards used the same connector.
Re:I'd just like to interject. (Score:2, Interesting)
What you're referring to as Linux,
Actually no, what I'm referring to is distro's as is quite clearly stated in my post in an attempt to forestall kneejerk Stallman pedantry. Obviously I failed.
Re:Terminals on an Apple IIGS (Score:5, Interesting)
There's not many dumb terminals around any more for sure unless you're using an IBM Mainframe I guess. I suspect they still use 3270's.
I guess I'm going to show my age here, but to me a VT320 is very far from a dumb terminal [wikipedia.org], having used a real glass tty (i.e. terminal that couldn't do e.g. cursor addressing, or even backspace).
And the 3270 [wikipedia.org] in particular is about as smart as a terminal ever got. The terminal itself did the input field text editing before shipping the whole screen input back to the mainframe. Even though there aren't many actual terminals around you'll still see them emulated on PCs in quite a number of applications.
Installation skillz? (Score:2, Interesting)
His instructions are weird. You don't need ncurses to get a serial terminal working. serial port supporting getty (like agetty) is enough. and to activate changes in inittab you don't need to reboot your computer (it's not windows, you know..) just run "telinit q".
Re:Sigh, I just threw out my VT320 (Score:1, Interesting)
I wouldn't be surprised if the Meego was a slightly better machine than the Ultrix, performance-wise.
Slightly?
Ultrix ran on a fairly wide range of hardware, but a typical machine would have a single MIPS CPU clocked at around 25MHz (i.e. 0.025 GHz). It probably would have about 32MB of RAM... the largest Ultrix server I ever used had 128MB, but that was far from typical. Many smaller DECstations that I used had only 16MB. The disk would be at most a 1GB SCSI-1 device. Workstations would more typically have a 200MB drive.
A low-end netbook is probably going to have about 30x the CPU power, 16x the RAM, and several times the storage (except solid-state instead of an old slow hard drive)
We really have an embarrassment of computational riches today.
HOWTO (Score:3, Interesting)
Add the following to /etc/inittab
# Serial tty in case console stuffs up
s1:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -L -w 9600 ttyS0 vt100
then
telinit q
and you're done. Now you too can have a vt100 plugged into your ttyS0 serial port (or an emulator via a null modem cable running at 9600bps, no parity, 8 bits, 1 stop bit, no flow control)
Ok guys, this is how to do it (Score:3, Interesting)
The sad guy mistook a db25 rs232 for a parallel port... sigh
I've been doing this for years, since 1997... so this must be one of the oldest tricks in the book.
Here is my 4 step recipe for Ubuntu, using USB serial adapters:
1) hook up the stuff and config the terminals correctly (I used 9600 8n1 due to long cables, got weird chars at 19200+) /etc/init/ttyUSB0.conf
2) Install Ubuntu on your system
3) put the following in
# ttyUSB0 - getty
#
# This service maintains a getty on tty1 from the point the system is
# started until it is shut down again.
#start on stopped rc RUNLEVEL=[2345]
#stop on runlevel [!2345]
respawn /sbin/getty -8 9600 ttyUSB0 vt100 ...
exec
---(repeat for as many terminals you have, incrementing the 0 of ttyUSB0 to 1 to 2 etc)---
4a) reboot
or
4b) sudo service ttyUSB0 start
(repeat for as many terminals you have, incrementing 0 to 1 to 2 etc)
*) profit
Here is my setup with a WYSE vt420 compatible and two vt320's
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rickdeckardt/4748415699/ [flickr.com]
Gee wiz, that was easy... So why is this on the frontpage of slashdot?
Re:Sigh, I just threw out my VT320 (Score:3, Interesting)
My ADM-3a (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADM-3A) mumbles 'get off my lawn' in the general direction of your VT100.
We had them hooked up to Intel Development systems, Gould SEL mainframes and some box or other than ran CP/M.
The VT100s (and Wyse 120s) came later with the Vax 11/750.
Funnily enough, a recycling company picked up some old WY120s from us a couple of weeks ago after we'd brought one of our veterinary clinics into the 21st Century and off an old THEOS multi-user system.
VAX, PDP, rock solid (Score:1, Interesting)
Best config of them all, MicroVAX 4000, VMS 5.5-2, DecNET Phase IV. Back in the 90s I used to set up a boxen for customers. When checking back years later, it wasn't unusual to find them still up and running from the point of initial setup.
My weirdest client of them all still runs a Micro PDP-11 based comms system 24/7/365 with no downtime.
Just so you kids know.