I was watching the thing and got to the part where he said that he was using XON/XOFF flow control and thought that the guy’s Arduino RS-232 ASCII-to-Baudot-encoding thing could be made more efficient if he’d make the encoder use the RS-232 RTS/CTS lines instead of XON/XOFF encoding. Then I realized that he’s converting to 45.5 baud, and that at that speed, even his 9600 baud line — normally the chokepoint for people with modern hardware, you know, 1980s and on or so — is blisteringly fast and inefficiency at that point is irrelevant.

Instead of unalias ls to avoid having just ls send ANSI color escape codes to the terminal, he should really have passed the term argument to agetty, like maybe dumb.

EDIT: At 10:22, where he starts typing the login, it looks like the teletype does seek back up to reposition the cursor at “LOGIN:”, so it does support at least some limited escape codes. Maybe something a little smarter than dumb.

Hell, maybe there’s even an existing terminfo/termcap entry for a compatible teletype.

EDIT2:

$ infocmp -D|xargs -i% find % -type f|xargs -n1 basename|xargs -n1 infocmp|less

Will give a searchable list of supported terminfo entries on a given Linux system.

On Debian trixie, I don’t see an entry for a Model 15 Teletype, but they do have an entry for a “model 33 or 35 teletype”, tty33.

EDIT3: Searching eBay, looks like there are apparently teletype machines available on eBay, though some additional poking around suggests that that may not be the most affordable way to get one.

https://old.reddit.com/r/Teletype/comments/g30rdi/where_to_buy_first_teletype/

Teletype post

Where to buy first teletype?

Hello everyone. I have always liked manual typewriters, as well as vintage computers. When I found out that teletypes existed, I thought the heavens had aligned for my ultimate device. Then I realized that I could not, for the life of me, find one at a decent price. I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of the hobbyists online did not purchase machines that were in need of repair for upwards of $2000. (Thanks, eBay.) So my question is, where should I look if I want to purchase my first teletype without getting ripped off? I assume those prices are very inflated, as I can’t imagine there is a massive market for these things. Also, does anyone have any suggestions for a good starting model? I just want to hook it up as a serial terminal. I have experience with modems, and if a modem is hardwired in, that’s fine.

Oh yeah, don’t go buy one on ebay. People are insane about what they think their junk is worth, plus shipping is prohibitive. What you should do is subscribe to the Greenkeys mailing list and introduce yourself.

Then do a little research about what kind of gear you want - an ascii one, like a 33, the kind they used to use as a computer terminal? An older 5-level one like a model 28? Even older, a model 15 or 19, or a 14 that prints/punches on paper tape instead of roll paper? Something obscure and odd looking like a 26? And ancient and rare historical artifact like a 12? Plus all the different countries’ variants, etc.

Once you have some idea what you’re looking for, post to the greenkeys list and say what you’re after, how much work you’re able to put into getting it working (do you want something you can just start using, or do you want a restoration project?) and most importantly where you live.

Once you’ve put it out there what you’re looking for, if it’s not super unusual it’s not unheard of for it to just appear at your door. A bunch of people have more teletype machines than they can really keep, and would much rather see them go to a good home than be scrapped. Especially since many collectors are elderly and thinking about what will happen to their stuff when they die.

EDIT4: Oh, looking at the agetty command line, he passed “asr33”, for the term parameter, which is apparently a (much, much newer than the machine he has) teletype machine, but it shouldn’t support color, so I don’t know why he’d be worried about that. Maybe his ls aliased to ls --color=always instead of ls --color=auto or something; they don’t show it in the video. Or maybe unaliasing it wasn’t necessary, and he just didn’t realize it.

That was a complete rabbit hole. Thanks.

The only thing possibly more epic would be converting a Linotype to a Linux terminal. It uses hot lead to create type for newspapers, etc.

I was trained to use one as there were so many in use they still have some niche applications for specialty printing.

Anyhow, I call them Satan’s Typewriters and still have small scars from hot lead all over my forearms. And I love technology.

A good film:

Linotype: The Film

That is insane!

glad I watched the whole thing, that is amazing

Shit that beats out connecting my 90s serial equipped typewriter to use as a terminal output.

Damn, but we can be so creative!