1980 Terminal with Linux - TeleVideo 950

The first thing I wanted to get back up and running after getting my capacitor reforming setup done was my S-100 stuff, but I'm going to need a terminal to use those computers so we're starting with this deceptive looking Televideo 950!
More on reforming capacitors: • Reforming Capacitors -...
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[@Xarius86]

It actually kind of makes sense that the "back space" goes back a space, and the "delete" key actually deletes a character.

[@user-fh2fm7vr4m]

This is my experience with AS/400 as well, at least thru terminal emulators.

[@southernflatland]

back space backs a space delete key deletes a key Gotcha 👍

[@randomdesign6304]

That's how they worked back in the day, including on DEC VT terminals. So it's not a weird mapping, it's correct by design.

[@deang5622]

Backspace goes back a single character, not a space.

[@tramadol42]

​@@randomdesign6304 Absolutely, it went so far that on the keyboard of my good old Siemens terminal, the key has a double label: "Backspace / Backstep". Together with the Shift key, it sends the code for "Delete".

[@TheGreatAtario]

Very early in my programming career, it became my job to write terminfo files for clients to be able to use our product's Unix version with all the formatting and whatnot that could be mustered on whatever hardware they bought, since the built-in ones were either insufficient, wrong, or missing entirely. And a short while before that, I had used many different hardware terminals in college, where the TVI950 was a staple. Big nostalgia here!

[@ChrisGonnerman]

Yeah, I wrote termcap and terminfo files for various terminals on a variety of mid to late '80's Unix systems. That was... fun... for some definition of fun anyway. Never used a TVI950 but spent a lot of hours programming a Motorola 68000-based computer using a Motorola M220 terminal. Even played around (in off duty time) with reloading character sets.

[@TheGreatAtario]

@@ChrisGonnerman Unix terminfo authorship fistbump!

[@ChrisGonnerman]

@@TheGreatAtario Thanks. Not the most fun things I've done in service to the computers, but neither is it the worst.

[@phiwise_9489]

I love how this video is half "Retro hardware repair" and half "Wizard explains how not to luse with unix; luses anyway". Very aligned to my particular interests!

[@sadmac356]

Same honestly

[@JeffreyGroves]

You should be using the `reset` command when changing term types too. You may even need to cycle power on the terminal if the terminal gets really freaked out.

[@ppokorny99]

I disagree with the statement that 25 pin connectors had more flow control. IBM introduced the 9pin version because its smaller and it has all the serial handshake lines that are used for rs-232 communication to modems common in the 80’s. Tx, rx, Cts, rts, dtr, dsr, cd, ring, gnd. The 25 pin connector has other pins defined for synchronous serial clock signals, secondary serial channels, and a bunch of unused or reserved pins. None of which were useful for a pc connected to a common async telephone modem or serial printer.

[@ChrisGonnerman]

Most of the extra signals of the DB25 version weren't used by basically anything by the '80's. Not sure how much they were used before that, as I started college in 1983 and that's when I started getting serial terminal experience. Used to know the main pinouts for a "proper" null modem cable by heart. GND is GND, RX crosses TX, DTR crosses DSR, RTS crosses CTS. Just don't remember the numbers now.

[@MegaManNeo]

screen was actually the first thing on my mind when you mentioned those character issues as I know it can fix those when set properly. It may have been struggling for you but me as a viewer, these old terminals look freaking awesome!

[@mahtism]

11:12 I relate to this "YES!" When you fix something and it works, there is no greater feeling.

[@hawksights]

When manufacturers still had confidence in their customers

[@professorpwerrel]

For real, that manual is evidence that the right to repair has been eaten away at. For companies like Apple, their main argument is essentially that people are too stupid and will end up hurting themselves. So how much are they trying to say humanity has deteriorated since the 80s?

[@Okurka.]

These were sold to professionals.

[@EssenceofPureFlavor]

Yeah, I don't think that's really it as much as it is the intended market.

[@EngineerOfChaos]

@@Okurka. While true, even now things are much more sanitized to make it easy.

[@ByronGoodman]

Systems came with getty configured already. They typically would auto-discover the terminal, unless someone forced it (we did have scripts). They were very simple to setup. He is kinda doing things very backwards compared to how we did it in the 80s. inittab would spawn the serial sessions. I don't miss the days of abusing wall, and .plan files. I could never go back to writing code on one of these. You lived in emacs, and emacs was your 'screen', or 'tmux'. I still use emacs today, but it is painful over a serial port.

[@liamwatson5125]

I just love hearing that beeping the terminal makes when you type. Such a soothing sound. Dot matrix printers always shake the table as a result of particle transfer to the surface.

[@obiwanbenobi4943]

Reminds me of the good old days when I made a null modem cable using a male and female serial port connectors and a piece of telephone cable, match light solder and paper clips as jumpers where needed. It worked well enough to transfer my files, but after that I didn't need that cable again for 15 years and I finally sent all my old parts to the recyling people to do what they could with it all. Cleared out an entire closet full of old machines and parts. The stty command can be used to examine and change the baud, etc. settings on a serial connection.

[@heraldb.1077]

I've been trying to do this exact same thing with my Televideo 950 and ran into these same issues and gave up! Thank you so much!

[@retrozmachine1189]

termcaps are fun. I had to keep a suite of cobol programs working under linux for many years. For what ever reason the authors had hard coded it to work with SCO-ANSI only and the SCO-ANSI that was available for linux was incomplete at the time. Fortunately I had a copy of SCO, the suite was originally targetted at SCO, and was able to swipe the file from there.

[@frugalprepper]

I remember back in the day, I used to work with serial communication all the time on AIX and HP, System V and HP-UX. I also did a lot of CNC machines in shops. I was the serial master. I remember one tech had been at a customer for a week trying to get a Fiber Serial MUX working on a AIX it basically took 16 Serials to dumb terminals over Multimode fiber to another building. Back in the day before IP and Telnet were really a thing. I had it working in about 2hrs. Had to loop 4 and 5 and 6,8.20, set it up for software flow control. I still have my breakout box. Every once in a while it still comes in handy.

[@no1leader135]

Cool video, 6502, 6522 and two 6551 and Linux. Perfetto.

[@pkneeyahx]

How can you get anything done with those two Hydro Thunders in there! Lol

[@MileZero313]

Lmao so true

[@shmehfleh3115]

Also, in almost all cases, control-H works as a backspace. It even works in Apple II Basic.

[@johndododoe1411]

That's because backspace is ASCII character 8, so on anything resembling a serial terminal, it's the same as sending the 8th control code via ctrl-H . Similarly delete is character 127 (which makes a lot more sense when using 7-hole punched tape to write teletype messages to be sent directly to another terminal over a pay-per-minute phone line. The huge problem is that someone in the early days of Linux swapped the two ASCII codes and insisted their nonsense was the correct behavior for the local Linux console.

[@cfg83]

This is gorgeous! I can't say for sure, but I think that I programmed C for the first time on a TV950 @ UCLA in the PIC (Programming In Computing?!?!) class back in 1985. It was definitely the classic green on black screen. It was attached to a Unix server. Parking was free after 9 PM, so I would drive in and program late into the night. Hmmmm, I guess nothing has really changed, :) . I am sooooo happy you made this video. Even if it's not the exact model I used, it's one of its brethren and deserves to be cherished.

[@oliverw.douglas285]

Reminds me of the DEC VT100 Series of Terminals. Very similar in many regards.

[@CORBARocks]

I love your channel, because I used some of the old kit you so diligently restore. Now a days who under 30 understands hardware flow control?!

[@petersnape1537]

back in the 70's and 80's we used to say that RS232 was just another name for Murphy's Law

[@nanopone]

the snap folder in your home folder gave me shivers..

[@PunchysGameRoom]

Great job cleaning that thing man, looks incredible!

[@thevintageaudiolife]

Thanks for posting these videos, i really enjoy them.

[@paulstubbs7678]

Nice terminal, although not being VT100 is a problem these days. I've been looking for a terminal for ages, nothing in my neck of the woods. Serial is not that hard, you just have to get used to what DTE & DCE is all about, and how it was used back then, although I have a bit of an advantage, spending my early working years at a telco fixing terminals & modems.

[@rommix0]

> although not being VT100 is a problem these days. Anything not based on DEC terminals would be an issue. That's for sure.

[@GBS1043]

Wish I had a dollar for every VT100 I installed

[@deang5622]

DCE and DTE is simply terminology for each end of the serial link. It'a the control lines you need to get your head around and which particular ones are being used. For example, CTS, RTS. Or DTR, DSR. It's identifying which flow control mechanism is in use and which signal lines and how they behave.

[@paulstubbs7678]

@@deang5622 Yes that can be a real challenge, as these lines kind of get repurposed, and referring to older documentation on serial can lead you astray as the modern use quite often treats them as general purpose I/O lines, the only bit relevant sometimes is whether they are inputs or outputs.

[@JonTheGeek]

The first PC barn find revival on youtube! Someone call Junkyard Digs!

[@tonyt73oz]

AHHH the sound of a dot matrix printer .... memories 🙂

[@snap_oversteer]

Vintge terminals and modern Linux/BSD are always fun, yours seems to be very usable for 1980 vintage. I've successfully tried to connect old 70s Tektronix 4006 vector terminal to my desktop and it kinda worked, there are luckily still few tools that can plot in the Tek format, but biggest problem usability wise is the lack of lowercase keys.

[@6581punk]

I like how it makes a Pong type beep when you type.

[@mortwin6054]

i like the look of the keyboard they a good bit of room in the terminal good accesses 😀

[@dx9s]

HEY.. used those terminals at college.. Forget the name of the Unix (it was AT&T licensed), but called Prime something, think it has S-100 bus. Used for teaching classes how to write/compile C and Fortran programs, and has some SQL (think it was Postgresql) on it. Brings back memories.

[@Mike-mu7tk]

Control-H is the "escape code" that does delete. If your terminal isn't mapped properly. That usually works

[@JdeBP]

One really cannot call something an "escape code" if there's no ESC in it. It is a _control character_ . (-:

[@MarshallGates]

I remember using the TeleVideo terminals along with the CP/M system they had.

[@pavman42]

Gotta respect youtubers who pull out a fire extinguisher and prominently display it in their video right before turning something on.

[@thomasrichard7054]

Very nice video, bringing back memories of my student days in the 90s when I got a TeleVideo TVI925 for a chocolate bar. Attached it to my 486 box running Debian (1.3.1 and later 2.0) with a 9/25 adapter and a 9-pin nullmodem cable. I recall enabling agetty /dev/ttyS1 in /etc/inittab, and that was pretty much all I needed. The terminfo file supported tvi925, and I did not run screen here. Well, the serial terminal was meant to serve as a fallback when screwing up XFree86 configs, but I actually never needed it.

[@ramsn1971]

Back in 2004 one of my clients had an old SCO Unix server with 16 dumb terminals connected via serial cable, in offices on a 2 story building. The clerks worked on a lot of medical data entry and a terminal was all they needed. My job was to convert all the stations to Windows XP with a telnet client instead. the funny thing is those clerks hated XP; they wanted their old dumb terminals back. They really could input a lot of data with those old terminals.

[@safi164]

Shelby always does cool projects

[@dave7244]

When you opened it up. TBH it didn't look too bad. Sure there was a lot of dust and dirt. But there didn't seem to be any corrosion which would be my biggest worry with a piece of equpment kept in less than Ideal conditions.

[@asagoodfriend]

Yo Shelby's working on a secret Atari Project! :0

[@davidmoore4567]

To change the back space character try using stty erase. Hopefully the commands for clear, vi and Emacs should work perfect as these will make use of the term variable, make sure display is unset. I did not use this model but the 925 with a Spiderport that used to connect to both Sun OS and Primos systems when I was studying. Obviously I preferred the Prime Pt220 and Dec Vt320 and vt340 terminals to this one. If you even need to connect to the Serial port of an old Sun system the default is 9600, 7 bits, even parity with xon/xoff and if connected to the console do not press the break key if you have one as that will bring up the open boot or old mode prompts depending on the setting

[@tschak909]

It was common to use the printer port on these terminals (and ADM-3A's and the like) to attach to "development boxes" which could accept Intel hex data to send to a ROM emulation circuit. Atari and many game companies did just this to send the output of a cross-assembler to the testing hardware.

[@BrianJurkowski]

What an awesome trip down memory lane. Thanks for sharing this! If you ever want to sell one of those terminals, let me know! I'm in the market for a vintage terminal. I would love that retro-computing vibe when working on the Linux command line!

[@realdragonrude]

The best times when companies outright told you to take it apart and check everything

[@Okurka.]

Best times? You want to take apart your new smartphone and check everything before you can use it?

[@oliverer3]

​@@Okurka. If it wasn't glued together and it voided the warranty I'd totally do this xD

[@Okurka.]

@@oliverer3 Opening a device doesn't void the warranty.

[@Pracedru]

Its really interesting that hardware form the late 70'ies and early 80'ies can be controlling modern computers that are so much faster than enything from back then.

[@tinkerwithstuff]

Looking at monitors with that shape makes me want to watch "Riptide" again. That would be boss.

[@luca-draws]

Looks cool AF, reminds me of the PCs from Alien (1979)

[@ropersonline]

16:50: The Atari ST also beeped in acknowledgement of every keypress. Not the Ellen Feiss kind of beep-beep-beeps, but ye olde _"Roger, wilco, I have registered your keypress and will act accordingly, yes siree!"_ kind of beeps.

[@gnubbolo]

If you give a museum relic to this careless guy he'll tear it to pieces in two hours.

[@trekintosh]

I saw that akbkuku easter egg in the command line :)

[@Many_Sparrows]

These are my favourite type of video you make 👍🏻

[@edgeeffect]

Nice terminal but looks like it really wants to be a VT100. Most terminals I used either had a VERY minimal status line at the top or no status line at all. But a lot of DOS or CP/M terminal emulators did have that heavy bold status line at the bottom... now I see where that styling came from: "if it's good enough for Televideo, it's good enough for us".

[@der.Schtefan]

Back then, when you were missing an adapter, sometimes you were able to string 3 others together to arrive at the same result. 😂

[@franksemi_modular]

May I suggest making a Linux installation with a teletyper as the only output 😃

[@oqibidipo]

To stop bash inserting those ?2004 things add these lines to /etc/inputrc or ~/.inputrc $if term=tvi950 set enable-bracketed-paste off $endif

[@Ice_Karma]

The `stty` command should help you with the backspace and delete thing.

[@Matthamatic]

Cat goes μ

[@nticompass]

My media server uses a motherboard that has a built-in serial port, so I have that configured to run an agetty on it at boot. Side-note that motherboard actually lets you enable serial in the BIOS! You can access the BIOS screen via serial! :O Anyway, I set up a special "serial" user on the server, so when you use a terminal and login, you get a menu asking you your TERM type 🙂

[@Lee_Adamson_OCF]

A little dirt don't hurt. :D Ahh, I love serial terminals, man.

[@simonro9168]

Huh. I knew of you as Akbkuku through Druaga1, but only when I saw your Linux login did I realize that it was you with a different channel name.

[@CarlosWagnerCosta]

How cool is to see what we can do with old equipments. Unfortunately the most modern computers programs make use of graphics and the kids love gaming.

[@shmehfleh3115]

Most 25-pin serial ports were female. When IBM designed the PC, they went with a DB-25 male for serial, because they wanted to use a DB-25 female for their parallel port. From then on, the DB-25 (and DB-9) male ports became the de facto standard for PC serial devices.

[@radornkeldam]

the thing I love most about the GNU/UNIX/Linux/BSD, etc is the cohesiveness and consistency of the environment and all the software... yeah...

[@douro20]

Bitsavers has the firmware for these terminals.

[@MrNoobed]

9600 or 2400 seems totally reasonable if all you're doing is text mode. Rough if you're transferring files but fine for command line.

[@johndododoe1411]

The 2400/75 Asymmetric modem rates were optimized to allow 7 keystrokes per seconds versus 240 cps of data return. This later evolved (conceptually) to ADSL modems at 5000 times the speed .

[@neilbrookins8428]

Null modem is not always needed. If you are connecting dte to dce you go straight through. But dte to dte needs null modem. Dte means data terminal equipment. Whereas dce data communication equipment. So that’s like a terminal connected to a modem. Ideally the rs232 port should be labeled as dte or dce so that you know what cable to use.

[@leonardoantonio8756]

You did a lot with that terminal! maybe the next thing is try an only text web browser

[@Sylvan_dB]

Serial is far worse that you describe. 😅 There is also Data Terminal Equipment (DTE, the "standard" for terminals) and Data Communications Equipment (DCE, the "standard" for modems). In theory you could connect a DTE and a DCE directly. In reality, never. The first "tech" job I was paid for, was helping a 3rd party company to run serial cables thru my father's office for his first computer system (S100 chassis, multiple terminals selected with a switch, two printers - a dot matrix and a daisy wheel). I was hanging out in Dad's office after school, and as soon as the crew running the wires found out I could solder and read a pinout diagram, I was recruited. We ran the cables, and soldered the appropriate 25 pin connectors on the ends with the wires crossed as needed. This means not only matching Tx and Rx, but also the hardware handshaking lines (almost possible to ignore on the terminals if you run a slow enough baud rate, but critical on the printers).

[@RobertLeeAtYT]

Oh, I used to hate the keyboard on these. The keys took what felt like a couple of pounds of pressure to depress.

[@frogz]

386 views May 13, 2023 .....i feel somewhat special for getting this number

[@MrFungi69]

yeah.. you so special.

[@frogz]

@@MrFungi69 don't be angry, we can't all be spechul

[@muttBunch]

I have the keyboard that belongs to that terminal. Now I know where it came from

[@c128stuff]

When backspace isn't working on some terminal, try ctrl+h instead. And the terminfo/termcap 'crap' still has relevance today for ssh sessions for example.

[@chitan1362]

I just find it so amusing to see "11th Gen Intel i9-11980HK" and "NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Mobile" shown up on a 1980 terminal.

[@maxsteffens]

you need to analyze the serial communication identifying the characters that need to be replaced, for a correct communication, with arduino

[@thejackofclubs]

when you run screen, you should attach it in another terminal emulator to see what it is actually doing, just open another terminal window or tab and run screen -x

[@kenkas002]

a computer/human interface capable of connecting to a computer on the other side of the country, with built in user-side printer connection? printing a file from a computer on a printer many kilometers away? we barely have that today. you would have been king of the conference room back then.

[@rfc-793]

I suspect you should be able to edit (or fork) the terminfo file associated with your TERM setting to disable color but maintain highlight and underline.

[@f15sim]

25 pin d-shell connectors are DB25. 9 pin d-shell connectors are DE9. Yes, this is a hill I'm willing to die on. 🤣

[@Hiraghm]

I ssh onto my (linux) phone from my linux desktop and vice versa a lot, actually.

[@noizex]

What were your settings for the S2? I have TeleVideo 925, got seemingly the right cables but nothing happens when I try to connect via agetty - seems like it just times out. My terminal does not have the status line by default upon power on - I can get it to show with SHIFT+NO SCROLL/SETUP though.

[@Jimbaloidatron]

Since it's just another RS232 port, can you hang another terminal off of the printer port? (To see what would be sent to the printer.) And switch between them with the escape sequences too...

[@crabdonkey6381]

The terminal I used to use has a Centronics parallel connector that looked like that! Weird that it's serial!

[@gman83090]

Is the terminal that was used on the threrack 25 the DEC VT100

[@p-196]

I would take the Keyboard appart, bring the keycaps and the Case shels to the bathroom and clean it with soap and water.

[@matteo1429]

that keyboard..!! 😍😍😍😍😍

[@curtwuollet2912]

Termcap? Terminfo? I'd almost forgotten. And I'd like to forget ncurses. Did u set your env?, export?

[@jasonhoch7105]

And here I thought I was about the only one to make 70s/80s terminals useful in the 2020s…😂

[@se6369]

screen apperently also remove the text on the bottom line. Is that line really needed?

[@glufke]

The problem with the SUDO asking for login only happens when you run agetty directly. In my case, I have a systemctl in my pi to auto load the agetty. Then the terminal behaves like a real Linux term. I can install, run sudo, logoff, logon, etc… my Wyse 55 is always ready to be used…

[@JdeBP]

It's all to do with controlling terminals, and appropriate use of a tool to set a new session ID and allow re-setting the controlling terminal by agetty would have fixed it.

[@kanalnamn]

My experience are that these things usually work better with BSD. Preferrably OpenBSD in this case.

[@perinoid]

If screen captures the keyboard (especially the printing key), maybe it would work after pressing Ctrl-a first? Maybe the "hardcopy" combination (Ctrl-a h) combination would do the job?

[@GothGuy885]

if Linux had "EGetty' it would print out "picture it! Sicily 1925...." on your terminal 😄

[@FavoritoHJS]

Sorry for asking a dumb, completely unrelated question, but was suspend janky on linux and if so, how did you fix it?

[@nicflatterie7772]

I once showed up for a new job and got a keyboard worst than that one. I had to bring it home and soak it, and scrub it down. You should have seen the rest of the office…. I spent the first week cleaning…

[@AnnatarTheMaia]

Actually I have a DEC VT340 and I want to do this permanently on Solaris 10. Can you do a video on how to do that?

[@FritzPinguin]

Actually I liked the 925 more. I thought always the 950 is a kind of overkill. The 925 did a great job on the Cadmus ...

[@fremenondesand3896]

I had a 286 with a beepy keyboard, and it'd buzz constantly when playing games where you hold down cursor keys.

[@professorpwerrel]

I love this!

[@RickJohnson]

15:40 - I think that should have been 80 columns by 24 lines (or rows).

[@willk7184]

That thing's almost as ancient as me.

[@augustinchenault9981]

Leave the dirt there, it’s part of the terminal now.

[@anibalrojasphillips852]

excelente esos recuerdos