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."
Digital (Score:2)
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Amazing. I never thought I would see it used (in the right way at least) again!
news? (Score:4, Informative)
so this guy hooked up a terminal to a netbook. mad skillz.
move along people, nothing to see here.
Re:news? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention he mistook a DB25 connector for a parallel port.
Re:news? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:news? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:news? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, DB25 was standard for serial. the DB9 serial was an IBM oddity, as was the DB25 instead of Centronics for parallel. I guess it saved them a few bucks. :-)
However you just had to remember gender, Male DB25 was standard serial, and female was their non-standard parallel connector. Easy
The nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from. - Andrew S. Tanenbaum
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DB9
ITYM DE9.
Re:news? (Score:4, Informative)
However you just had to remember gender, Male DB25 was standard serial, and female was their non-standard parallel connector. Easy :-)
But we're talking about RS-232 serial ports here, so in theory:
But terminals are always DTEs even though they always seem to have a female connector so that the fragile pins are on the easily-replaceable cable; many non-PC computers follow the same logic. And then there are things like Cisco routers which are either DTE or DCE depending on the cable used or how it's attached.
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And don't forget DEC's version of the DB9 serial port, which was a bit earlier than IBM's and had a different pinout. So, if you have old DEC equipment with a DB9 that isn't talking to you, you may need a different cable than you expect.
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And really, that the netbook is running meego is irrelevant, this can be done with any linux distro.
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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.
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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.
Speaking of pedantry, "distro" is not a contaction. If it were a contraction, it would be distri' and not distro. And if it were a contraction, there would be an apostrophe whether it was singular or plural.
</pedant>
I don't really understand (Score:2)
Could you clarify you point by using a FUEL/Car analogy?
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>Core tools are easily replaced.
Then go for it, or start calling GNU/Linux by its proper name.
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Actually the proper name for what I use is:
Mandriva GNU/Linux/xorg/KDE/Qt/Gtk
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You're forgetting one simple GNU/Fact - rms is GNU/God. He created the GNU/Heavens and the GNU/Earth!
Re:I'd just like to interject. (Score:4, Funny)
Is he also responsible for GNU/Metal?!
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Don't forget GNU/Coke!
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I don't think it needs to be called GNU/Linux either but Linux is not an operating system. Just saying Linux is perfectly reasonable short hand most of the time because those talkin about it either can make the distinction you are speaking about the operating system or platform from context or don't know enough about the subject to understand there is a difference between the kernel and an operating system.
Operating systems manage resources and provide some method for the user to interact with the computer
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No. One. Cares. Core tools are easily replaced. An operating system is not.
At the risk of feeding the trolls...
Yes, core tools are easily replaced, but usually they are NOT replaced - and when they are replaced, they are usually replaced with GNU tools, rather than vice versa. Writing a kernel is hard, but it would have been nigh on impossible without the GNU toolchain. And it WAS Stallman's GNU Public License that Linus chose as the license covering his then experimental OS kernel. So yes, RMS probably does deserve a little more credit than he gets for Linux. But then, so do
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I would like to thank Lightning Terminals for getting me a replacement keyboard so I could finish this article.
when (at least, part of) his initial problem was:
I am left typing on a undersized keyboard that has no life.
But I do agree that the other part of it is surely solved
I'm left facing a display screen that has no significant weight behind it
Right... how to make a portable into a transportable.
Or, you know, nothing beats a peer code review when the source code is presented on a listing (or punch cards) - at least the peer will be less inclined to criticise. The slight problem: keep the listing/punch cards from falling of your desk... you certainly need some weight there.
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Perhaps, but let's face it - the same kind of story "On The Iphone" would be news. Hell, we've had stories which were basically "You can view this website On The Iphone".
Of course, I'd rather that stories on Nokia's products (who are only the biggest seller in mobile phones and smartphones) were specifically on actual product news, given how rare coverage for them is. But still, I'd rather take a once in a blue moon story for MeeGo, than the usual three "Someone did something trivial On Their Iphone" storie
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...actually, you can already ssh quite easily into a jailbroken iphone. The real danger there is reseting the default password so that everyone else can't.
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I think if he made it a IP interface over serial and then used the DEC as a graphical terminal to the netbook that would be more interesting.
That would be interesting. Especially since TCP/IP is flatly impossible with an out-of-the-box serial terminal, such as a VT320.
At best, it would have to be a lame-o casemod ("I have put this micro-ITX motherboard and an LCD display into the gutted case of a former VT320"). And that would render the matter uninteresting again.
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Of course you are right.
For some reason I thought this was an old unix machine and I forget how much things have changed. Long ago I actually wrote a /etc/termcap entry for a HP700/44. In the late 80's the company I worked for was importing the terminals and there was no support for them in Xenix. I wrote the termcap sent it back to SCO and they included it without even a thank y
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Is this where I make a joke about some pleasure model android thousands of years in the future not being able to ignore root commands?
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That's funny! My netbook has a video jack and three USB ports; plugging a monitor, mouse, and keyboard is beyond trivial; you could do it dead drunk.
I don't have any problem at all seeing my Acer's screen, but then I have good eyes (well, one good one anyway; the cyborg eye I had the implant put in). The netbooks' keyboard is a little problematic, but USB keyboards are cheap.
I plan on getting an S-Video adaptor to plug it into my TV, and can use my wireless mouse and keyboard from the couch. Honestly, my fu
Sigh, I just threw out my VT320 (Score:5, Funny)
I rescued a Vax, complete with a VT320 from the garbage at work and while it all worked, I simply couldn't justify the electrical bill and the noise for a machine that had far less computing power than a Mac mini. So it finally met its end at the loading dock of an electronics recycling center.
Thinking about the VT320 makes me feel old; I'm sitting in the computer room at the university, with its linoleum floor, coding away on a VT320 logged into an Ultrix machine, with my custom termcap that mapped the function keys to screen sessions, I felt like I was CODING. REAL. SOFTWARE. This was the BIG TIME. Nevermind that even vi slowed to a crawl when someone invoked the compiler. I wouldn't be surprised if the Meego was a slightly better machine than the Ultrix, performance-wise.
Now get off my...aw, forget it.
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.
Re:Sigh, I just threw out my VT320 (Score:5, Funny)
Don't feel old. According to Prince, both VAX and PDP machines are bound to make a comeback next year when the internet is obsolete.
Byte8406 anyone ? (Score:1)
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I'm not sure how the GPs statement of "more stable than modern hardware" and the parent's statements about the "greatest feeling of stability I have seen" make any sense.
Stable, by what metric? IOPS? MIPS? By neither of these measurements do the old systems hold up - only in "length of time running, untouched".
Even then, it's not all that impressive by modern standards. How many people have Linux machines which have been left unattended for years on end - not just business machines in a back office, but mil
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A few examples of my definition of stabiity:
Re:Sigh, I just threw out my VT320 (Score:5, Funny)
Since we're feeling old, what I really miss about "those days" was the "communal" nature of a number of people all using the same machine at once. You were guaranteed that other folks would be logged in, and in pre-IM days a quick "talk" session with someone who knew C better than me solved many a tricky problem.
Funny enough, I was "talk"-ing with someone I had not ever met face-to-face about how to solve some algorithm or something, and he said it would probably just be easier to write it down on paper. I agreed to meet him, and asked him which lab he was in; turned out he was sitting in the carel right in front of me!
Good times. Good times.
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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.
When I was in college the terminals hiding in relative obscurity were the decwriter [columbia.edu] hardcopy terminals. That is, they were ignored in a corner until someone started to use them. The noise turned out to be a good way of chasing at least one or two people from their VT-102s. (Also taught you 'ed', no fancy "visual" editing on a hardcopy terminal).
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When I started university, the first time, the terminal was an ASR-33... 10cps tty... and a10cps paper tape punch. That or 80 col punch cards if you were using the mainframe. Of course there were machines you programmed by changing patch cords on circuit boards but they were starting to get old. And of course you didn't sort your data on a computer - you sorted it on a card sorter... made radix sorting very easy to understand :)
The second time it was IBM Selectric terminals, some no-name crt terminals hook
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My first terminal was a KP#26, you insensitive clod!
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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.
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Bah!
TV Typewriter!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_Typewriter [wikipedia.org]
Now get off my lawn unless you want to mow it.
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Jees, you kids today. My first computer was a slide rule! ENIAC was patented about five years before I was born. I didn't grow up with computers, computers grew up with me. [kuro5hin.org]
Should I invoke GOML? Now surely someone even more geezerly than me will chime in...
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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, a
Cards and Teletype model 37 (Score:1)
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Shame you got rid of it, I'd like one of the larger noisier VAXen (I have a desktop size MicroVAX 3100). I don't run it all the time but I do take it to retro shows (complete with serial terminal) and use it as a file server for a network of Sinclair Spectrums. A larger VAX would be awesome.
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])
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I was going to post something about my TI Silent 700, but there's no reason to do so now.
Thanks for ruining everything.
Takes me back - teletypes (Score:2)
Those were the days when we discovered that our military grade Eprom programmer was actually an embedded PDP-8 and you could run
Security Breach in Video (Score:1, Funny)
He probably should change his login password now.
DEC? Is that you? Alas, no. *sigh* (Score:1)
I was all excited to see DEC back in the news. Oh how I missed you since that fateful day in 1998 when you got bought by Compaq, which inturn got bought by HP by the woman who now hopes to do for California and America, what she did for HP [cnbc.com].
But alas, no. You are gone and shall never return. I guess I'll just have to file your section next to Enlightenment [enlightenment.org]'s, and all the other sections that people have no idea what they're for. Can't someone over clock a a DEC Alpha or something?
I'm really tempted to post
Uses Lego Mindstorm (Score:5, Funny)
What a blockhead.
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I can see the use of it. The Lego Mindstorm's is a null-modem cable, as for why they chose it to be is unknown to me, but hey, it means a DB9-DB9 null modem cable (female connectors on both ends, easy to connect to computer)
However, calling a DB25-DB9 a "parallel to serial" converter....
(Manual on the linked set for the VT320 talks about the 25 pin RS232 serial port, so I am really sure on that.)
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.
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Geez, I never had one that nice. Until about a year ago, I had a VT240 and a microVax on my desk, and used it daily.
Brett
Um, any Linux distro? (Score:5, Insightful)
The pleasant surprise for me is that it was so simple to set up a thirty year old video terminal on a modern light weight host system. MeeGo has not forgotten its Unix heritage.
Um, doesn't -every- Linux distro include this? I don't know of a single Linux distro with the exception of perhaps DSL and some embedded distros that wouldn't include basic command line tools. What do you expect with a Linux distro? That because your running Ubuntu all it does is boot a version of Windows XP in emulation via the Linux kernel?
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ObQuote: "Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it."
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There are other lightweight systems that use the Linux kernel, but ignore GNU. We should be grateful that MeeGo is designed properly. Other real distros aren't marketed to consumers, whereas MeeGo devices will start appearing in stores soon. I'm looking forward to being able to buy devices that are immediately both usable and powerful.
Even with Asus it was more like power on, overwrite their distro with Debian, mess around with drivers, start using the next day...
Not any Linux distro suitable for smartphones (Score:2, Informative)
I don't think the other distros in Meego's space (Android and ChromeOS) include ncurses or VTs. I could be very wrong, though.
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:Terminals on an Apple IIGS (Score:5, Insightful)
There's not many dumb terminals around any more for sure
The dumb terminals are the users these days, as demonstrated by this guy watkin5 who thinks it's such an incredible discovery that a Linux distro can handle a VT320 that he has to write an article about it (complete with a confusion between parallel and serial port DB25s that screams "I don't know what the heck I'm talking about but I'll talk about it anyway"), this other guy muirhead who think it's worthy of a Slashdot story and submits it, and kdawson who accepts the story.
I guess in 15/20 years, we'll have a story on how Linux can still run keyboards and mice equipped with a PS2 plug originally invented by Sony...
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http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=15%2F20+years [wolframalpha.com]
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.
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There's not many dumb terminals around any more for sure unless you're using an IBM Mainframe
I don't think we have any dumb terminals left, but they still have a big IBM mainframe. You log into it from your PC over the network using terminal emulation software.
Meh. Did that with an hp48 (Score:2)
I used to connect my HP 48 calculator to my linux machine via a serial port and used a terminal emulator on the 48 to log into the linux box and kill processes and stuff. Way more cool. And still portable!
Re:Meh. Did that with an hp48 (Score:5, Funny)
So did you type
-9
[ENTER]
process-name
[ENTER]
killall
[ENTER]
We all have super computers now. (Score:2)
What most people don't realize is the machines most of us use every day are far more powerful than the Crays of the 80's. I think tomorrow I'll see if I can get the Lear-Seigler dumb terminal hooked up to on of my Linux machines. You will need a teletype to beat that!
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Guy above you beat it, he had a "steam punk" restored teletype machine hooked to a netbook.
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1710194&cid=32821368 [slashdot.org]
On a side note when I was in uni we hooked a Bordot teletype machine to a Motorola 68000 based machine via rs232, and built some assembler text editors to talk to them (wasn't too bad, just made a lookup table to convert from ASCII to Bordot).
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.
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Bah. (Score:3, Funny)
A VT-100 should be plenty for anyone.
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A VT-100? LUXURY!
We communicated with rock tablets, a chisel and a catapult!
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Uh, yea... (Score:5, Insightful)
Guy calls a 25pin serial port "parallel" and is impressing us with is mad skillz using lego to "convert" it to 9 pin. The need for null-modem probably took him weeks to figure out.
I think this kid should get off of my lawn.
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Oh Earl, you leave the poor kid be, he ain't hurting nothin', and you wouldn't'a' even known he was there but fer that kdawson feller raising a ruckus; he's the one yuh should be runnin' off. Want I should fetch yuh yer shotgun and some o' them rock-salt loads?
heh (Score:2)
I remember doing something similar with a vt220 and dos back in the day. Now, what was the command to redirect console to the serial port? Something to do with con and pipes?
copy con || com2:
or something
also some baud rate and Xon stuff.
Anyway, the point being that my terminal had an amber phosphor and thus was far cooler than this guy's.
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Add
SHELL=C:\DOS\COMMAND.COM COM1
to config.sys, plug in your terminal and reboot.
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".
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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?
Netbook OS (Score:1)
Serial TTY is still a nice feature. (Score:2)
A long time ago I had a handmedown 386 I used to run Debian 1.3 on. At the time I was pretty poor and I didn't have a VGA display, so I used to borrow one from a friend when I needed one like for install or when I trashed it. The rest of the time I used a c64 running Novaterm with a mono display for clarity, worked great.
The 386 is long gone but the c64 still comes in handy.
Where's the GUI output as ReGIS/Sixel graphics? (Score:2)
That's when you've got something impressive. Text-mode output to a terminal isn't really that interesting.
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According to the VT340 manual (yeah, I know, OP has a VT320...), 800x480 for ReGIS graphics. Sixel is probably less.
Got this beat (Score:2)
I remember sitting in our college computer lab watching one of my fellow students (who was a bit more advanced than me) start up the first version of Linux that would boot off of floppies... boot and root disk, no installer, no hard disk device driver either. It had a serial terminal emulation and some basic network capabilities, so we connected a telnet session from it to a 300 bps decwriter terminal nearby and chatted back and forth for a bit. For those not familiar with the Decwriter, it was a slowish
done that (Score:2)
I did the same thing 5 years ago. I wanted a persistent IRC terminal next to my workstation because I was way to cool to just have an XChat window open all the time.
I put it together out of a Wyse 160 terminal that I pulled out of a dumpster (the box had never been opened so it was effectively brand-new) and a Pentium 90 netbook-like computer that someone gave me.