[HN Gopher] Breathing life back into a Minitel 1B with the Minimit
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Breathing life back into a Minitel 1B with the Minimit
Author : rcarmo
Score : 63 points
Date : 2023-09-10 09:40 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.jgc.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.jgc.org)
| DamonHD wrote:
| Never got to play with one of those, but did use the UK's Prestel
| a bit. And I'd _still_ like to be able to do the micropayments
| per page view that Prestel did!
| greatgib wrote:
| This project looks very cool to give back life to an old useless
| minitel.
|
| But sadly the source code, hardware instructions to make one
| oneself or tinker with it are missing.
| zoky wrote:
| When I was 13 or so, a friend and I were walking through an alley
| when we saw a power cord hanging out of a dumpster. We looked in
| and found 3 or 4 boxes that looked very similar to this one,
| which we rescued and tried to use, without much success. They
| would power on and you could type on them, but they wouldn't do
| much else. Despite having a phone jack I couldn't get them to
| connect to even a modem running a terminal emulator.
|
| This being in 1995, I didn't really have much by way of resources
| to figure out what the heck they actually were. I eventually
| surmised that they were part of some French telephone network,
| but these had US keyboard layouts and ran on 110, so to this day
| I have no clue what they were actually useful for, why they were
| designed to run in the US, or who threw them in the trash or why.
| It might have been in the vicinity of the local French consulate,
| but then again it might not have, as today the consulate is
| several miles away, and I have no idea if it was always there or
| if it has moved in the intervening period.
|
| Wish I knew what happened to those weird terminals; sadly,
| chances are they were thrown out during a move or something.
| MayeulC wrote:
| > They would power on and you could type on them, but they
| wouldn't do much else
|
| Yup, sounds like what happens when you power on a minitel. They
| are essentially thin clients as far as I know. Most setups I've
| seen had these plugged into the same outlet as a nearby phone.
| You would power on the minitel, pick up the phone and dial the
| phone number of a remote server ("3615" was the common one).
| Text would start appearing on the minitel with a landing page
| that acted as a service index and where you would be able to
| type in the name of the service you wanted to access, for
| instance SNCF to book train tickets.
|
| For instance this is a low quality video of someone using the
| 3611 phonebook in 2009:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fS3DazMR3QY
|
| There seems to be a few other phone numbers that you can still
| dial, hosted by individuals:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2mgDSBWOxI
| throwaway98367 wrote:
| Thick client - these hold some state and functionality on the
| client device.
|
| Thin clients are just display devices, completely incapable
| of anything without a server.
| gumby wrote:
| > minitel... are essentially thin clients as far as I know.
|
| They could definitely do some local computing. Most notably
| to me is that by the mid 90s you could stick your credit card
| in and it would negotiate with the chip in the card so you
| could buy something securely.
|
| (Apologies to American readers who didn't get chips in their
| cards for another couple of decades)
| tyingq wrote:
| Canadian maybe?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_(videotex_service)
| djweis wrote:
| US West (telephone company) used them around that time. I know
| they were in Omaha, NE but unsure of where else in their market
| it was available.
| makapuf wrote:
| Reminds me of a similar project
| https://hackaday.com/2021/11/25/bring-a-minitel-terminal-bac...
| b800h wrote:
| There was rather a lot of competition between Minitel and the
| UK's Prestel, with Prestel having an initial four-year head
| start.
|
| The competition was so great that when the Brits rocked up at a
| French trade show in the early 80s, the French organisers pulled
| the power to their stand, or that's how the story goes..
|
| In any case, sadly Prestel wasn't quite as successful as Minitel
| in the end. Perhaps the UK concentrated more on getting out
| Micros like the BBC and promoting computer literacy instead.
| mk_stjames wrote:
| I got a Minitel (I think it was a 1B) a few years ago and did a
| few things to get it up and useable as a small terminal.
|
| First was, my version required a key combination to be input in
| sequence to trigger the video mode change from whatever the
| original was to roughly double the lines/chars, then turn off
| local echo, and up the baud rate from 1200 to 4800. And
| unfortunately I could not send these keystrokes over the serial
| port.
|
| I had considered attempting some sort of ROM hack to enable these
| modes all the time but never went through with it (also my main
| ROM was soldered to the board, not removable like some later
| models)
|
| Eventually what I did was use a Teensy uC and a system of
| optocouplers wired to the keyboard matrix that 'pressed keys' in
| the right order at the right time to enable the mode I needed
| automatically on powerup. Timing was difficult as if I attempted
| to 'press' the keys too quickly or exactly together it would
| misinterpret or drop the commands.
|
| Now that the terminal would auto-configure itself upon power on,
| a Raspberry Pi 1 Model B running Raspbian in CLI-only mode with a
| wifi dongle was shoved inside it and hardwired to the serial port
| (with a TTL level shifter between it and the Pi's UART) and I had
| this setup running a few small programs I wrote to display
| weather, stocks quotes, 'screensavers' etc.
|
| I had the unit on my kitchen countertop by my coffee machine and
| for a while would turn it on every morning to check news and
| whatnot. Something about it was just super satisfying; the
| limited information meant my morning coffee wasn't overwhelming-
| just the day's weather, a few stock quotes, and a few headlines
| pulled from the BBC. All with this super cozy glow on the white-
| on-gray CRT.
|
| Unfortunately I eventually pulled it off my countertop and
| cannibalized the machine for other projects. The whine of the CRT
| wasn't something I wanted in my kitchen running all day. The
| little keyboard was cute but the keys made any lengthy input
| tortuous. And the power draw just for the nostalgia factor every
| morning didn't make a lot of sense when I have my laptop nearby
| anyway. I have no idea what the power consumption was but the
| little guy could put off some heat that is for sure.
|
| Sadly practicalities won out over the aesthetic.
| jgrahamc wrote:
| I have the Minitel 1B sitting on my desk right now. It's a very
| warm and comforting device. Something about its compactness and
| the gentle curve of the screen makes it far more attractive
| that the MacBook Pro sitting next to it.
| nicolas314 wrote:
| Ah but the keyboard... The worst ever keyboard since ZX81.
| Would it be your next customization maybe?
| Havoc wrote:
| I've clearly been reading too much AI stuff...though that's a 1B
| parameter model...
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Note the AZERTY keyboard, perfect for inquiring << Auel
| depqrtement ? >> on 3615 services...
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(page generated 2023-09-10 23:00 UTC)