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@arrowtype no, just a typewriter connected to the laptop through an Arduino

@nina_kali_nina cool! What does the connection allow?

@arrowtype It's still a work in progress. I can send commands to the steppers and magnets, so I can position the head and print characters. I can also scan the keyboard. I need to bundle it all together, so the controller would convert input from the UART into stepper commands, and send keyboard scancodes converted into ASCII to the UART. And so, a little TTY will be born.

@nina_kali_nina wow, sounds like a cool project! Am I understanding correctly that you are planning to send messages in both directions? So like, are you envisioning it as both a keyboard *and* a printer?

@arrowtype it's going to be a teletype! Kind of like the ones used by mainframes and mini-computers. Sort of like this teletype, but using a microcontroller, like late IBM Selectrics: https://youtu.be/2XLZ4Z8LpEE?si=ZAuBCcJXMGQa6Wsi

@nina_kali_nina WOAHHH that is so cool!

@arrowtype thanks! This is a very convenient way to interact with a screen-less computer.

@nina_kali_nina it certainly looks awesome from an aesthetic and tactile perspective. I can’t tell whether you’re being sarcastic with the description of “convenient,” though…

@arrowtype I'm not! I've been using NetBSD running on my Mac Classic through a little printer and a keyboard. Being able to see the history of commands without scrolling is really nice. Reading from paper is also more pleasant than reading from screen.

@nina_kali_nina nice. Well, I use a relatively tiny keyboard, so I can sort of appreciate the line of thinking!

@arrowtype but hear me out: when you use a teletype, you need to call man to see a manpage for the program you need help with only once.

@nina_kali_nina it looks wonderful, really. I totally hope to use the terminal on a teletype someday! I would just have to make sure to limit the print statements in my font builds…

@arrowtype @nina_kali_nina protip from the mainframe era: set your log output to IBM 1403 model 3 line printer, which gives ~1000 lines per minute XD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiEGoVzmyvs

@hikari maybe you still can do it retroactively!

@xiaopi oh, it's much easier. I write the links in Markdown and then run md2html to generate the html. Just like that: https://github.com/ninakali/ninakali.github.io/blob/main/links.md?plain=1

The whole site is static html. I used to use site generators and such in the past, but writing HTML by hand or just using markdown is much nicer.

@nina_kali_nina Oh, that’s a clever and clean solution, I like the ideal to only store md and html files inside the github io repository.

@xiaopi note that GitHub can convert md files to html by itself - but it adds styles I don't want and javascript, too. I am too lazy to set it up correctly, so I'd rather generate the html myself.

@nina_kali_nina I just create the links page and create it by using pandoc , thanks a lot for sharing your ideal and tell me how to do it. I add a links to your original links page.

https://xiaopi.one/links.html

@xiaopi thanks! I need to get back to this project...

@xiaopi this project is so old I posted about it on Twitter! I have saved the photos and the notes to github: https://github.com/ninakali/ninakali.github.io/tree/main/notes/dora

I was planning to do a repost when the project is finished. Right now I have separate Arduino projects for keyboard scanning and for stepper control. Plus, stepper controls are quite literal, so it's not like I can send a string and get it printed out just yet. But it can be done in a weekend or two :D

Here's a few photos from the last time I've tinkered with the typewriter/teletype.