Tweeting from the Teletype: How To

Here is the technical "how to" explanation of my previous tongue-in-cheek video, where I tweet from the ASR33 teletype.
Link to the previous video: • Tweeting from the Tele...
Link to Mike Douglas' excellently designed 20 mA loop to RS232 converter for the ASR33: deramp.com/tty_adapter.html
Note that I am certainly not the first one to do this, nor is there only one method. @TeleTweety has a whole twitter account devoted to tweeting from his (many) Teletypes!
/ teletweety
And a KZbin channel full of Teletypes in action:
/ @teletweety
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Learn more on companion site: www.curiousmarc.com
Contact info: kzbin.infoa...

[@agenericaccount3935]

I am convinced twitter would be a better place if everyone had to do it by teletype and not the app.

[@tristanband4003]

If you had to type in limited bauds, you'd have to think carefully what you want to say.

[@0fend0]

The phrase I definitely did not expect to hear in this video: "My cow has no legs."

[@CuriousMarc]

Happens to the best cows.

[@mxlion]

ground beef

[@oscarfeatherstone6688]

This was fantastic, now please try tweeting from a morse transmitter.

[@moconnell663]

SDRs are fantastic things. They would almost make the task too easy!

[@gameyord7182]

I want it.... NO I NEED IT

[@tomeucapo]

Real TTY "Unix" experience like 60s! Amaizing! :)

[@robertoiturrieta2029]

12:04 : "basically one thay to write that single line of code". That´s why you keep making outstanding & amazing stuff. Thank you, from Chile.

[@Digital-Dan]

Many of us were ticked off when the left arrow went away in the basic ASCII, to be replaced by underscore. We used left arrow for assignment in the language systems we built, in preference to "=" (ugh), or "

[@CuriousMarc]

Thanks! I was wondering what the story was with the back arrow and the up arrow.

[@lwilton]

@@CuriousMarc Assignment and exponentiation in ALGOL.

Woah, the world sure would be a better place if we had arrows for assignment and normal equals signs for equality in programming.

[@jgharston]

It always struck me as odd that ASCII63 had uparrow, leftarrow, but no rightarrow or downarrow. Uparrow makes sense to be there for raise-to-power, but only one of the other three??? Either just ^ or all four.

[@calebfuller4713]

@ I've never understood why other languages can't just do it like BASIC and use "=" for both. There's only one way code like: a=10 if a=10 then a=a*2 can be interpreted.

[@LiquidCheney]

I managed to be the second reply to your Tweet, so close to becoming a star! Keep up the good work, really enjoy the teletype videos.

[@CuriousMarc]

Thanks for replying!

[@dbingamon]

The reversal of zero and oh 'o' was that way on teletypes. It was also common on Ham Radio call signs.

[@overinvested]

this is actually innovative! not so much game changing, but very very cool! keep up the good work.

[@CuriousMarc]

Thanks. But I don't get how that whole communicating via computers idea is ever going to take off ;-)

[@overinvested]

@@CuriousMarc have you ever tried logging in to a BBS? i highly recommend this.

[@Codeaholic1]

You can set the number of columns with stty. And rainbowstream has options to set the colors, which can remove anything not black and white.

[@lonewolf31337]

Just awesome. I love this KZbin channel

[@adamsnook9542]

What an utterly pointless undertaking. I love it.

[@SubTroppo]

C'est chouette! Cela vaut la peine. Chapeau, Marc! If you entertain people (especially me), it isn't pointless.

[@KitsuneAlex]

Your understanding of UNIX is quite impressive honestly. Very nicely done.

[@Eo_Tunun]

So even in Tweets, a Teletype is a loud machine. How fitting. ^^) Excellent stunt, Sire! :oD

[@jacquesmelinand4717]

Nice "How to" Marc. I remember long time ago using French teletype Sagem TX20 as terminal on a GCOS8 system

[@Buzznut3000]

I learned to code on one of these circa 1973. We had a program called simtalk where you could chat, there were games and of course download naked ascii art pics. I remember downloading and printing an 80 page document. It took several hours every night after school for a week.

[@PatYorkAcoustic]

Now let's see the teletype print new tweets @CuriousMarc !!

[@jaydaily6751]

16:08 hahaha. Love these vids, keep them coming!

[@madmodder123]

Regular expressions save the day once again!

[@jensgoerke3819]

The classic solution is to tell getty about the terminal type, as defined in termcap or terminfo - that way the caps-only part gets handled as well. Had an ASR33 connected to a Linux machine, as well as a VT102, a TVI925, and a TI silent 703, all working flawlessly.

[@alpcns]

People that think (and work) like you deserve a statue. I just love it.

[@compu85]

Thanks for the tip on stdbuf and fold... it's made things much nicer on the NEC tty I have hooked to my Mac!

[@calebfuller4713]

So cool. Back when all-caps was the standard, because there wasn't enough bits to handle lower case as well! I remember back in the 90s there were still a few old-school computer operators/programmers from the mainframe days, who would habitually turn on caps lock when they booted their PC, and do EVERYTHING IN UPPER CASE! It's like they couldn't get over the invention of 7-bit character sets. 🤣

[@ehsnils]

The keyboard looks like it has the style you'd see on a Danish keyboard for the "O". Which in this case is an Ø - "OE". It do look like that key have been changed as it has a slightly different color.

[@video99couk]

Is it possible that the letter U is shifted slightly to the left?

[@rubysausages]

This is at the leading edge of technology 😎

[@RonJohn63]

3:56 A slashe through the "capital O" instead of the zero means that this is *really* old school!

[@achimhasenfuss4312]

Great work. 👍

[@CuriousMarc]

Hey, thanks for your humorous answer to my tweet! Sorry I probably did not pronounce your name right!

[@achimhasenfuss4312]

@@CuriousMarc That's not a problem ;) It's really difficult to pronounce with the "ch".

[@lwilton]

@@achimhasenfuss4312 As in German "ach"? Or something else?

[@ReneSchickbauer]

So now Mark needs to find a way for the IBM 1401 to hook up to the TTY line as well. Then the old girl will finally be able to send tweets and/or implement a simple terminal so you can run an interactive Eliza program written in Fortran ;-)

[@FreeScience]

The Shift and Control column offsets was an interesting TIL.

[@BlackEpyon]

Could you imagine if Trump was President during the Cold War, he'd have to do all of his Twitter rants by teletype?

[@nickboivin949]

It's the SteamPunk of Tweeting very cool nice Job Sir.

[@SudosFTW]

Debian Buster (10.0) supports Pentium II CPUs just fine. what you want is to install linux-image-686-pae at install from the i386 install ISO. However, since you have Jessie already installed, you can go and change your apt sources to stretch instead of jessie and then dist-upgrade, then do the same again (change stretch to buster) after a reboot to get buster. it will just plain work. Source: I helped someone install Buster on a 6-way ALR Pentium Pro server recently. After this, if you want Kernel 5.4, you can add a buster-backports line to your apt sources and then `apt -t buster-backports dist-upgrade` once again to upgrade packages, reboot, and you should be on the absolute latest kernel. Once this is done, I highly suggest going into synaptic in X and setting it to prefer packages from backports, since installing packages after this point may provide some version mismatches between packages in main and backports.

[@btrdangerdan2010]

The sounds made by this tele typewriter reminds me of my own IBM personal selectric typewriter.

[@timrichter1980]

Ohh yes.I wished it was easy to hack it, to give it teletype functionality!

[@lwilton]

@@timrichter1980 I have an old IBM Executive wide carriage machine that was modified to have solenoids on the key levers so it could be used as a printer on standard fanfold forms paper. It was originally used as an output device on an GE 635 to print batch reports on the tin plating line at Kaiser Steel in the 1960s.

[@dbingamon]

I used to use the KSR-33 on a Commodore 64.

[@cybercat1531]

Ouch when the Linux tooling docs where so bad it was faster to implement the 72 line wrap and escape color code filter on the arduino.

[@cybercat1531]

And I say this as a lifelong Linux programmer, I often find it to be the case that we have the tools to do almost everything, but whoever made them didn't document what it can do and how properly.

[@BlackEpyon]

@@cybercat1531 That's what happens when us nerds don't have PR guys and manual writers to "translate" for us.

[@foxdavion6865]

Proof that just as any program written on an x86 system can run on any x86 system. Any display and input which uses ASCII can be used as an ASCII display and input.

[@GoingtoHecq]

So, would you consider printing some modern ascii art, and maybe playing a test adventure game?

[@pmcgee003]

CuriousMarc: I wonder what the command to tweet is? Linux app: 't' CM: figures. 🤨

[@rochr4]

Alias

[@RetroRogersLab]

I spent quite a few hours on ASR33 teletypes from 1972-1978 when in high school. I can't believe I'd forgotten about the "O" and zero characters being reversed.

[@MLX1401]

Not a fan of Star Wars nor cows in particular, but somehow COWTH VADER made my day.

[@nickstubbings]

nice

[@cliffordyapp2110]

Impressive! Especially liked the "easier to do it in hardware" moment. Out of curiosity, was there an "industrial" Model 15 type version of ASCII teletypes designed to run all the time, or did they just swap in a bunch of the less expensive machines as they wore out instead?

[@CuriousMarc]

Yes, the Model 35, which is basically an ASCII version on the Model 28, which itself is the successor of the 15. The 35, as the 28, is a very robust machine designed to run 24/7.

[@Xicohtencatl_Xayacate]

How did you link Twitter to your Linux terminal? Maybe I could try doing the same with Telegram instead....

[@DAVIDGREGORYKERR]

What about putting that in your startup script so you don't have to do that again, could you download and install SHC to convert BASH scripts into .so files that can be installed into /lib directory and run from there.

[@asr33]

Traditionally in Unix you can use "\!" to create the pipe characters; and a few other escape codes, enabled using the XCASE (or LCASE) stty flag. The linux kernel doesn't include these, it's too modern. But it's available in a patch here: github.com/hughpyle/ASR33/tree/master/rpi/kernel

[@LMacNeill]

Both utterly useless, and absolutely one of the coolest things I've ever seen -- all at the same time. :-)

[@hqqns]

@CuriousMarc I hope you see this message - 'printerbanner' command would be awesome to try out on the tty!

[@CuriousMarc]

Neat. Works on Debian, but I have to limit the width to what the TTY can print, like: printerbanner -w72 hello

[@hqqns]

@@CuriousMarc That's right, I figured you would work that out so I didn't mention the width argument :)

[@jamesgrimwood1285]

So mechanical ttys have infinite scrollback, if you don't throw the paper away. What happens if you try to run an interactive terminal program over a mechanical tty? Something like a full screen editor? Would the whole system just get stuck in a never-ending loop of trying to catch up printing out the screen?

[@lwilton]

There were a lot of interactive text editors designed for tty type devices. Many of these were later modified to also support some form of screen terminals when those came along, but many of them retained the ability to handle line at a time devices.

[@aserta]

Now i'm really curious as to what's the oldest machine (of this genre, so not a telegraph system) that you can possibly connect in a reasonable way (let's say no more than one station conversion (outside breadboard magic)) so you can tweet something. I imagine the limitation is exclusive to electric output. Punch card twitter. :))

[@cheapasstech]

I discovered a 'still' in use form of TTY or more RTTY communication. Weather and airport status info, commonly known as NOTAM (notice to airmen) take a look at the specs for the 'radio printer' which was found in early widebody Airbus aircraft

[@cheapasstech]

Citing Wikipedia: In aviation, ACARS (/ˈeɪkɑːrz/; an acronym for Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System) is a digital datalink system for transmission of short messages between aircraft and ground stations via airband radio or satellite. The protocol was designed by ARINC and deployed in 1978, using the Telex format.

[@lwilton]

​@@cheapasstech And for those that don't know, TELEX was a commercial message communications service, that still ran baudot communications protocol. There was a competing company that did the same thing but ran ASCII protocol. Most major businesses through the 1970s would have both cable and telex addresses as well as a phone number.

[@ChimeraX0401]

Now I want to see making a tweet with IBM 1401....

[@lwilton]

The 1401 didn't have a console, you would have to punch cards on the 026 and feed them in thru the card reader. Then read the results on the line printer, or worse, punch cards and then run them through the interpreter at about 60 cards/minute to print out the first 60 of the 80 columns. And it would have the same problems with lacking a lot of characters we take for granted these days.

[@albertstadt9853]

Can your Patreons spring for a new ink ribbon? That teletype is fading!

[@BillyVerden]

Great Video!.. but I'm kind of prejudiced because I like all your videos! What do you think would be the oldest piece of equipment you can get to Tweet? Lol.

[@CuriousMarc]

The messenger pigeon?

[@CuriousMarc]

Someone also mentioned the stone tablet.

[@BillyVerden]

Haha.. I'm sure you could do all of those. Surely there's a Linux script?!

[@zorgatron8998]

Smoke signals?

[@phillip5245]

@@CuriousMarc How about a messenger pigeon carrying a stone tablet? Of course that would not be very feasible from a question of weight ratios. Perhaps if you had an African Swallow. But, of course, African swallows are non-migratory.

[@chlordk]

06:57 It's a plug-board!

[@listofoptions]

Now if i can get my selectric memory 100 to work in the same fashion.....

[@DandyDon1]

There were proprietary communications accessories for the Memory 50/100 machines I believe. Finding one would be rather difficult, especially since most of these machines were leased. Yours like both my machines may have a "Property of IBM Corp Armonk NY" plates affixed to the underside.

[@riverchampeimont]

Doesn't rainbowstream obey the COLUMNS environment variable to get the number of columns in the terminal?

[@testtesttest1278]

1 new subscriber here...

[@WenirR]

Maybe $TERM environment variable can help you

[@greendryerlint]

There are some amazing inventions in computing and communication over the last 100+ years, but to me it's a tossup as to whether the more amazing engineering feat is the microprocessor or that people designed, engineered, and built teletypes and other complex machinery with a zillion moving discrete parts back in the 1930s, and without such tools as CAD/CAM, and all the collaborative tools we take for granted these days.

[@FLMKane]

Dude that thing sounds like a low volume AK when you're typing

[@FennecTECH]

You dont want to enable that service unless you want to be able to get a console there at any time

[@patrickcrabb6212]

Anyone have a teletype for offer? This would be amazing to have at the ready. And it would blend well with my idea of a ye-olden room. I have no idea the how on a mechanical level, but as hell as my witness it will be done.

[@JohnGardnerAlhadis]

I wonder if it's feasible to 3D-print the components needed to reproduce an ASR 33 teletype. There're schematics in PDF format on Marc's website, which may or may not help (I'm an electronics n00b, but I wish I wasn't). Otherwise, I'll just have to fight you for any remaining teletypes that somebody has to offer. 🤣

[@ketominer1016]

striking o instead of 0 actually was a thing in some implementations and some people still use it, very confusing

[@SanMarvinNinguemSantana]

Rabanastra - Final Fantasy XII... German machines?

[@jacktheripper156]

The ultimate state of linux: Run a systemd service in order to be able to use a serial tty. Sad times

[@Codeaholic1]

It's not really that different from editing an inittab to run a getty. Init is still managing the "service".

[@victorprokop2240]

why poettering

[@jgharston]

The original TTY users must have worn ear protectors!

[@jpsimas2]

what happens if you press up to see the last comment in the terminal history?

[@kingdededelicious]

jp that's a good question

[@alblgz]

Why not just strip the 7th bit from the ASCII you're sending to the Teletype, as you're doing some conversion anyway? That way you'd get both lower case → upper case translation, and [ \ ] → { | }. With somewhat more software work you can even translate | to !

[@0x8badf00d]

Debian Jessie (8)? Buster (10) works just fine on my Pentium II machine.

[@pulesjet]

I learned to type on one of these things. LOL

[@cyberp0et]

Complicated :) Linux is awesome! Try doing this in Windows :))

[@NickNorton]

02:55 just add your username to the dialout group.

[@CuriousMarc]

That will not work of course, since /dev/ttyACM0 is part of the tty group. And that’s not a file permission issue anyhow. It is related to a SElinux policy problem.

[@Cjx0r]

I thought that was a drum roll....

[@alexer_eternity]

Twitter in the 60s

[@xani666]

No, dude, just add your user to the "dialout" group, that's what it is for

[@CuriousMarc]

Which of course will not work, since /dev/ttyACM0 is part of the tty group, and this is not a file permission issue anyhow, but a SELinux policy issue.

[@xani666]

​@@CuriousMarc Interesting, it seems it changed from version to version. On my system the ttyS* are owned by dialout group but the ttyACM* is owned by plugdev(for whatever reason). IIRC the "proper" way to handle it was messing with some udev rules to make those devices have your as an owner (and I apparently did that at some point in the past), but it is a bit of a mess. Also SELinux is disabled by default on Debian so I kinda didn't suspect it.

[@AndrewTubbiolo]

D00d! U R 1337!

[@Strothy2]

Elon Musk sending tweets via his own satellite network ain't got shit on this old typie boi... what is next? :D