Ramblings of some nerdy IT tinkerer dude.
This category serves as a catch-all for my vintage computer hobby, which is one of my bigger interests.
After watching a CuriousMarc’s series of videos restoring a Model 19 Teletype on Youtube, I HAD to have one. As someone who has an unexplained penchant for vintage stuff, technology, and steampunk (like?) aesthetics, this not only checks the boxes, it hammers them home!
Continue reading “Grail Acquired: Teletype Model 19”Trying to get some new posts going as I’ve been slacking lately, but for a good reason; I’ve been crazy busy! One project that someone turned me on to was one found on Hackaday; specifically this project: https://hackaday.io/project/2836-arduino-teletype
Continue reading “Teletype Fun with Arduino”With all the joy and happiness the holidays tend to bring (just hear me out), the computing world lost two notable figures this month, both of which have had quite an impact on technology…
Continue reading “December 2019: Two Notable Losses in Computing History”(Feeling nostalgic)
While I know BBSes still exist in modern telnet form, and I’m sure even a few (at least one of which I used merely a couple years ago) with real modem and phone line connectivity, I really long for my BBS days where I signed in, played some door games, sent a bunch of messages, and tried downloading Doom for the 12th time (MOM PUT THE PHONE DOWN!).
Continue reading “The BBS REBOOT Movement – Let’s Do It!”I have some more in-depth articles in the works, one of them mentioning connecting to BBSes and using door games back in the good old days. Figured I’d ask – if you used bulletin boards back in the day, what was your favorite door game(s)?
Continue reading “Favorite BBS Door Game?”
Poking around Twitter yesterday, I saw a post from @48kRAM about a MOD file for Thriller. I do occasionally play a few mods for old times sake at home, but thats usually the extent of my MOD listening. In this case I figured I’d grab the file then add it to my collection later.
Imagine my surprise when I double clicked the file and it started playing in Windows 10!
My last post mentioned that along with the Sperry Uniscope terminal, I found a bunch of Sperry, Univac, and “Mapper” ephemera (stickers, magnets, etc) around it. Apparently the previous owner was a Univac employee and worked with the “Mapper” software, which is still available today from Unisys as “BIS”.
Continue reading “Sperry / Univac and Mapper Memorabilia”Happened upon a “barn sale” over the weekend. Lots of junk and almost left empty handed until I found a side room and spotted this…
I had no idea what it was beyond being a very vintage terminal, so I grabbed it.
So the past few days I’ve been poking around in the Youtube channel “At&t Tech Channel”. Within that is the “At&t Archive” that hosts tons of old videos from At&t, Bell Labs and MA Bell. These videos are awesome for a variety of reasons; but other than the retro-futurism of them, it shows just how much MA Bell either “thought” or “was” the technology provider of the people back then. (At least until the Carterfone Decision)
It’s really interesting to see the concept videos showing paging for farms, how the “central office” was obsolete and going away, leading to *gasp* DIALING (and later push-button dialing), amongst other things.
It’s also interesting how a handful of these videos are somewhat local to the PA/NJ area, as the NJ Bell labs building was a substantial part of them back then, and (if I’m not mistaken) where a number of major innovations, including the invention of the transistor happened.
If you’re nerdy like me and need a new time waster, definitely check out this channel!
At&t Tech Channel (and archive): https://www.youtube.com/user/ATTTechChannel
With temps in the high 90s and low 100s in Philly, after picking up my Teletype ASR-32 a week ago, I’ve been sitting in the AC diving into all sorts of resources, web sites, and videos learning about them and the various technologies they either originally used or continue to use today.
Continue reading “Learning about Teletypes – Down the Rabbit Holes We Go!”