most of us who are old sufficient are likely to have had our very first experience of an on the internet service a long time in the 1990s, either with the likes of Compuserve or via an ISP. For our French visitors the on the internet experience will have come much earlier, as a forward-thinking telecommunications atmosphere led to every home in the country getting a viewdata terminal. The Minitel system as it was called was a runaway success, as well as was only lastly turned off as late as 2012. many of the terminals make it through to make a excellent basis for projects, as well as it’s one of these that [Louis H] has taken as well as improved with an ESP32.
One of the special things about this job is that unlike so many other Minitel conversions it doesn’t include tearing into the terminal itself. instead the PCB plugs into the socket on the back of the system as well as emulates the line for the terminal to talk to. It can then be utilized as an SSH terminal over WiFi, or as a serial terminal for the ESP32 itself for example running a MicroPython firmware. If you can handle the French AZERTY keyboard there is no easier method to drag a viewdata terminal into the 2020s, as you can see in the video below the break.
Chez Hackaday, we like these nostalgic gems from the 1980s. indeed we such as this traditional French public network so much that we’ve featured it rather a few times. right here for example is a similar job utilizing an Arduino.
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