3 ms·

They were VT320s with beautiful amber color! A few years prior to that I hang out there as well. I remember a bunch of (older) students were taking precious tim

They were VT320s with beautiful amber color! A few years prior to that I hang out there as well. I remember a bunch of (older) students were taking precious time on one of the Suns (Jagor) and all I wanted to do was to run rendering algorithms I wrote in C on it (I was a highschool kid). So, I devised a devious scheme. I wrote a C program that malloced memory like there's no tomorrow. I figured out that SunOS didn't have a memory quota for users. What happened then was that I got a PID for my program and waited patiently until the whole OS crawled to a halt (usually fast enough it started trashing the hard drives due to lack of memory). Students, out of frustration, would leave the terminals one by one as their IRC sessions and whatnots would stop working. It was a rule to never leave your terminal without logging out, so I had a clean system. Once they all left for a break, I killed my PID, got back the memory and resumed my snowflake rend.. er, work. Fun times!

ptman 9y ago
denial-of-service attack
Trumpalumpalous 9y ago
Godless Americans committing computer crimes and admitting it openly on discussion forums.... this is why we need to shut the Internet down and rein it in under good Republican rule of Law.
j_s 9y ago
Are there any hardware options connecting old monochrome screens (such as MDA or Hercules) via modern technologies like USB?
- qubex 9y ago
  Yes, there's a multitude of USB-to-RS/232 adapters and Linux can easily be configured to echo a terminal to the serial port from boot onwards. Once you've got a serial console you can do whatever you want. Depending on the terminal, you'll need to fiddle with baud rates, parity, and obviously hardware issues such as male/female connectors and number of pins. It took me quite a while to get my VT100-compatible terminal talking to my RaspberryPi3, but now it does, and it's great fun (particularly since I set up SIMH and have an ancient period-appropriate version of Unix V emulated). Brings me back to when Greybeards reigned the Earth (or rather the machine room).
  - j_s 9y ago
    Thanks! I am looking to attach just an older monochrome monitor to a current-day PC rather than a full-blown terminal. I was unable to find any obvious solutions with a quick search. I believe the constraints of the older technology may offer some advantages like reducing eye strain, nostalgia (as you mentioned), and maybe even making the interface obtuse enough to reduce my interest in staying online. Your suggestion sounds doable today and would accomplish my intended goal.
    - qubex 9y ago
      I fully support using older (simpler) interfaces to avoid distraction but I am afraid I have to inform you that green phosphor screens are quite a strain on the eyesight.

ptman 9y ago

denial-of-service attack

Trumpalumpalous 9y ago

Godless Americans committing computer crimes and admitting it openly on discussion forums.... this is why we need to shut the Internet down and rein it in under good Republican rule of Law.

j_s 9y ago

Are there any hardware options connecting old monochrome screens (such as MDA or Hercules) via modern technologies like USB?

qubex 9y ago
Yes, there's a multitude of USB-to-RS/232 adapters and Linux can easily be configured to echo a terminal to the serial port from boot onwards. Once you've got a serial console you can do whatever you want. Depending on the terminal, you'll need to fiddle with baud rates, parity, and obviously hardware issues such as male/female connectors and number of pins. It took me quite a while to get my VT100-compatible terminal talking to my RaspberryPi3, but now it does, and it's great fun (particularly since I set up SIMH and have an ancient period-appropriate version of Unix V emulated). Brings me back to when Greybeards reigned the Earth (or rather the machine room).
- j_s 9y ago
  Thanks! I am looking to attach just an older monochrome monitor to a current-day PC rather than a full-blown terminal. I was unable to find any obvious solutions with a quick search. I believe the constraints of the older technology may offer some advantages like reducing eye strain, nostalgia (as you mentioned), and maybe even making the interface obtuse enough to reduce my interest in staying online. Your suggestion sounds doable today and would accomplish my intended goal.
  - qubex 9y ago
    I fully support using older (simpler) interfaces to avoid distraction but I am afraid I have to inform you that green phosphor screens are quite a strain on the eyesight.