1980 Terminal with Linux - TeleVideo 950

I used a bunch of terminals in the past as a 80s child. At 15 I was fixing terminals at our local hospital. What ever they had used old CGA monitors and connected to a base I think was the actual terminal. I got caught bypassing the terminal program once I was there waiting for someone and because HIPA was non existent instead of getting in trouble for using their system the lone pc tech gave me a part time job. I helped install PCs there too. All kinds of crap. It was fun. My last year in HS we had a freshman come in who thought he was a know it all. I let him think that till one day he’s in tears and panicked. All the office terminals in our school went down for over an hour. He couldn’t figure it out and apparently caused it by touching stuff without knowing what he was doing. I came in by request since the staff knew I had experience and worked part time At hospital in afternoons. After 5 minutes I had everything running. Once teacher did not want a computer in her office in a remote part of the building she never used it. So he unhooked it and everything died. He asked what it was. I took a pencil drew four boxes and a circle then erased a box. He looked confused. You broke the ring. I plugged in a adapter at the break where he removed the pc. We had a token ring system.

I have a Wyse 60 in my garage for 25 years. Turned it on tonight after cleaning it up and it powered right up. Characters a bit fuzzy cleared up in 10 minutes. Ran it for two hours no problem. However I followed your instruction and can’t get it to work. I know the terminal works as I can adjust settings. And my Linux box is recognizing the usb port for TTY. Not sure if there is a setting on the Wyse causing the issue or what. More tinkering to come.

Not all is lost. You got one more option. If you figure out how to install Vim, it's all good.

i really like all the passion that you put through this

I have a Televideo 905 that I still use on a daily basis on my linux system! Televideo terminals are definitely built to last!

Was just saying the other day how much I want a terminal connected up to a modern Linux machine. Was hoping you'd run Ed + edit some files the way the FSM intended.

Curious what happens if you set `TERM=dumb` (I know that on my box, at least, `man` gives some warning about how the term is 'not fully functional', but it renders correctly.)

Yep, my vast collection is stored in a barn.
No other place to store hundreds of antique computers nobody loves.
My favorite 8bit antiques I moved into an old house trailer so they are a little bit better off.
But tons of 68k / powerpc macs and 486 / Pentium PCs in a barn.
Picks up the Model M I'm typing on... yep... empty speaker grill.
The only terminal I have in my collection is a Heathkit.

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.

I bought a televideo 950 in my university sophomore year in 1983 along with a hayes modem, game changer for me so I did not have to goto the computer center to work on by CS degree. My first years on BSD unix on a vax….

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…

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!

Wouldn't it be sensible to put a switch on the serial adaptor to enable and disable null modem mode?

The `screen` program was fine in the ancient past (pre-2000) but today I recommend using `tmux`. It's actively maintained and supports many more terminal features. The only feature `screen` has that `tmux` doesn't is support for the zmodem protocol. I'm a grey beard (took my first programming course in 1976) and used the TV950 for several years. Thanks for keeping history alive.

expecting a n updated and modern form of bash to respond with out the modern functions ... just sounded not right to me.. try an older bash or different shell..

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".

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.

Watching the terminal setup on Linux reminds me of doing that with a Unix System 3 with 24 serial ports...around 1983. I used to carry a rs232c 25/9 pin breakout box with LEDs and a peg matrix around in my pocket all the time!