HAVING fun WITH DUMB TERMINALS
For a long time now, [Morgan] has been wanting an old serial terminal. In a stroke of luck, one of his buddies at the Quelab hackerspace scored an amazing ADM-3A terminal from a collector. It’s a historically significant piece of computing and UNIX history, so certainly [Morgan] needed to get it working.
The ADM-3A terminal pre-dates the well-known DEC VT-100 terminal, but because [Morgan]’s new acquisition speaks RS-232, he had a good shot at getting it to work with one of his much more modern boxes. He’s using a Windows laptop loaded up with FreeBSD in a VM to speak with the terminal. Surprisingly, the only additional hardware required was a USB to serial cable television and a DE9-DB25 serial adapter.
It may not be as amazing (or as loud) as Quelab’s Teletype ASR-35 they have set up for Zork sessions, but it’s terrific to see ancient hardware have some
use. best now, [Morgan] is editing files with vi and of course playing Zork. seems like there’s plenty of life left in this old dumb terminal. After searching for an old VT-100 for a while now, I’ve got to say I’m pretty jealous.