Greetings, and welcome to "Veronica Explains!" I'm Veronica, and today, I'm
going to do something neat with an old terminal, a Raspberry Pi, and a bit of Linux maneuvering.
This is the Wyse Wy-55. This particular model
features a classic monochrome display in "paper white", but
other versions came in amber and green. The keyboard I have with it is a particularly
satisfying WY60 with an ASCII layout and what looks like Cherry MX switches under the hood.
As far as terminals go, it's a pretty run-of-the-mill find. Now, in this video,
I'm not going to go into the fascinating history of Wyse and their terminal products. If that's
something you want to see, let me know in the comments. Also let me know if you want me to
go into greater detail about nerdy things like null modem cables and old serial connectors.
I am going to explain terminals really quickly for the uninitiated. This thing may look like an
old computer, but in reality, it's quite different from what we're used to here in the roaring 2k20s.
Unlike a modern-era computer, which has you and the processor working in the same space,
a terminal is usually connected to a computer or server in another room,
building, or country! These fantastic finds typically output text, and text alone,
onto the screen, in a single color. This might seem antiquated,
but this was a vast improvement over the switches and punch cards which preceded it.
Even after computers became small enough to fit on a desktop, terminals like this one remained
in service for years as point-of-sale machines, data entry stations, or library card catalogs.
If you grew up in the 90s like I did, you might have fond memories of seeing
a terminal just like this one, helping you find your way to the latest Goosebumps book.
Personally, I think they're super neat. And you
probably do too, since you're watching, and hopefully liking, this video.
OK, now that we've laid the groundwork,
lets talk about how I got this terminal working. If you've got the parts, you can follow along.
To start with, you're going to need a Linux machine. If you don't have one, the cheapest
way to go is the venerable Raspberry Pi. In my case, I've installed Debian 11 on this Raspberry
Pi 4 with 4 gigabytes of RAM. You don't need 4 gig for all of this, but more RAM doesn't hurt.
I always recommend using a Pi case with a cooling fan,
because the 4 series does run very hot. I won't go into setting up Debian on the Pi,
but I'll provide a link to the official Debian instructions in the video description.
And yes, I'm sure this will also work on other distros- I just like Debian for simplicity sake.
I configure mine via SSH, but you can plug a monitor and keyboard into it if you want to do it that way.
While you're getting your Pi updated, make sure your terminal is in good working order.
This one was only gently used, from what I can tell. I did have to go through and set the
"personality" to VT100 mode, and the baud rates to 9600. Your mileage may vary with your terminal,
but from my experience, this is enough to get everything fired up. With the Wy-55,
I set up these parameters, and then saved with F12, "space", and then a second F12.
After you get situated, it's time to connect the USB-to-serial adapter and the null modem cable.
It's important to make sure you actually have a null modem cable, and not a regular serial
cable- in my experience, nowadays, the folks at the store won't necessarily know the difference.
Now, my terminal uses a DB-25 connector, but my serial adapter is DE-9, so I made sure
the null-modem cable I bought uses the correct connectors. My advice if you're just starting out
with terminals, is buy a lot of adapters- you never know what might come in handy.
When you have what you need, plug the adapter into your Raspberry Pi and make sure the Pi
recognizes the adapter with the `ls` command: `ls /dev/*USB*`. If all goes well,
it should show you a `ttyUSB` connection in response.
Note the number of the serial TTY connection, although it'll probably be "0".
Then, if your distro is using `systemd`, you should enable the serial-getty service
to start with the system. "Getty" is a program which manages a terminal line,
so "serial-getty" is the one for a serial connection. Get it?
And just note: if you're not running `systemd`, you probably already know what to do with your
specific init system, and I'm sure you'll let us all know about it in the comments below.
Now, all you should have to do is plug the DB-25 connector into the modem port on the terminal, and
start it up. After a moment, hopefully, it shows you the familiar login we all know and love.
Now that we're logged in, we have a Linux terminal. On a Wyse terminal. In 2021.
So what can you do with this thing? Well, from what I can see,
anything you can do with the terminal emulator on your modern computer! All of your terminal
apps should run in beautiful monochrome, with 80 columns by 26 rows, just as nature intended.
[music plays]
So is a 30-40 year old terminal going to revolutionize your life and change everything
about how you work and play? Probably not. It's a fun project, like working in a garden or painting
on a canvas. It's also a fantastic conversation starter. But more than that, I think projects
like this help you connect with the history of the technology that we use every day. Terminals
like this one connected our world together well before the Internet did. And the "terminal/server"
model of application development is seeing a resurgence in our current web-based world.
Most of all, the reason I love projects like this is that they show us how these old things
we have lying around can have a second life. One of the things I love about Linux is how easy it
is to connect up an older device, whether it's an old printer, scanner, or even this old terminal.
It's still useful, even if it needs a helping hand from a Linux distro and a Raspberry Pi.
I hope you liked this video- my first, actually.
I'm hoping to do some more of these videos about retro technology, random finds, and of course, Linux.
Because Linux is awesome. And so are you.