[HN Gopher] Ceefax from an old Raspberry Pi
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Ceefax from an old Raspberry Pi
Author : rbanffy
Score : 72 points
Date : 2021-10-30 10:22 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.suppertime.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.suppertime.co.uk)
| olgeni wrote:
| Trivia: teletext was really popular in Italy, and a large
| fraction of small TV broadcaster ran teletext equipment based on
| Erlang (R14B, FreeBSD 8.something, custom ISA board for the
| signal). If anything bad happened to the software you'd see the
| teletext page counter "restart" as the gen_servers came back up
| \o/
| alerighi wrote:
| It still is popular, even if only RAI has it this days. My dad
| still uses it, and you can access teletext even on new
| televisions/decoders.
| olgeni wrote:
| RAI has a tangled mess of stuff, including a content manager
| written in Python 2 and running on FreeBSD 10, and a ton of
| Windows things. Some clients are based on wxPython (!)
|
| It used to run on VAX hardware long, _long_ ago... now it 's
| all VMware on the servers.
|
| In the '90s they had 'interactive teletext' services, like a
| few banks did, where you would phone in, get assigned a
| teletext page, and use it as your screen while interacting
| with DTMF: teletext 'apps'.
|
| Those where the Red Hat 5 days and there was a system that
| would _fax_ error reports to the other room :D
|
| PS: some of the live captioning you can see around runs on
| Erlang too.
| yaseer wrote:
| I remember the Ceefax games. As a child, I got hooked on this
| quiz, 'Bamboozle!'.
|
| There were other quizes that had competitions with prizes. At the
| end, you had to call a premium rate phone line to guess a random
| number and win the prize...
|
| The expression on my parents faces receiving the phone bill is
| probably the same as those today, after a kid has been playing
| with lootboxes on their iPads.
| barnabee wrote:
| Bamboozle was pretty fun but Digitiser [1] (a teletext based
| gaming magazine) was magnificent!
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digitiser
| kingcharles wrote:
| Amazing. It has a Wikipedia entry. Digitiser was my life when
| I was a kid. I would come home from school and read it before
| watching Neighbours.
| 867-5309 wrote:
| >booking holidays
|
| I had completely forgotten about this, but remember seeing it
| within Teletext as a child. I wonder if people actually sent
| credit card and passport numbers over unencrypted VHF bands, open
| for anyone within a fifty miles radius to sniff
| lima wrote:
| Wasn't it unidirectional? I think you'd have to call them for
| the actual booking part.
| 867-5309 wrote:
| that would make sense!
| tinus_hn wrote:
| It was perfectly normal to spell them out over unencrypted
| wireless phone connections that could be picked up by consumer
| devices. And it's not like we're better today, we still use
| connections where the encryption is optional (DECT) or where an
| attacker can downgrade the encryption (GSM).
| doctorshady wrote:
| A few years ago, it was normal for Panasonic DECT handsets to
| use the AES-based DSC2 cipher. Though a downgrade attack is
| likely possible; I think under normal circumstances with weak
| reception, they'll stop encrypting traffic.
|
| The VTech/AT&T ones (same thing) on the other hand, I still
| don't think will encrypt call content.
| contingencies wrote:
| Don't forget physical handover, snail mail and email.
| dmje wrote:
| I cheated, and installed Basic on a Pi. It comes with a Ceefax
| emulator. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_gMlq_IShPo
| aftbit wrote:
| fwiw your TLS is misconfigured.
| ChrisKnott wrote:
| The online archive of Ceefax and Teletext is incredible[0].
|
| Unfortunately a lot of it seems to be corrupted (e.g. random page
| from 1981[1]) . Presumably the tapes have degraded. Seems like
| the type of thing that ML could potentially recover (obviously
| the linked example was the Racing results).
|
| [0] https://archive.teletextarchaeologist.org/
|
| [1]
| https://archive.teletextarchaeologist.org/Pages/Details/9717...
| funstuff007 wrote:
| teletext themed 404 page:
|
| https://www.empirasign.com/404
| zeristor wrote:
| What about the Ceefax music, for when the filled in broadcast
| time with "Pages from Ceefax".
|
| I particularly remember the barking dog track.
| iso1210 wrote:
| Sure just pull them from youtube
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6uzHdk4Xmk
|
| And play as described
| C-Fields wrote:
| This is really cool, thanks!
| zw123456 wrote:
| That's super cool.
|
| I have noticed on some older cable STB have one or two lines at
| the top of the screen that look like they are sending data using
| those lines, only on certain channels. I theorize they are
| updating the STB or something. Does anyone know what that is ?
| tehbeard wrote:
| Subtitles perhaps?
| 867-5309 wrote:
| or 'cue dots', signalling impending commercial break?
| reaperducer wrote:
| When I was in television, that area was used for time code and
| closed captioning data. I think also for transmitting the
| current local time. There were VCRs that could auto-set their
| clocks from the local PBS station.
| bitwize wrote:
| Reminds me of the loud DTMF tones that used to play on certain
| cable channels, like Nickelodeon, back in the 80s. Turns out
| these were a form of in-band signalling to the local cable
| operator that it's time to play local commercials.
| RedShift1 wrote:
| I'm grateful to have grown up in a time where Teletext was a
| thing. I used to watch BBC with Teletext subtitles and it
| basically taught me how to read, write and speak English.
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(page generated 2021-10-30 23:01 UTC)