Modern Linux on a Wyse Terminal

Let's go all retro and try out an old Wyse Terminal with a Linux install!

In this video, I'll walk through the basic concept of hardware terminals, what you'll need to connect to a Wyse Wy-55 terminal, and a few of the neat things you can do with one. It's surprisingly useful... if monochrome is your thing!

The commands you'll need:
ls /dev/*USB* (finds USB devices, outputs the ttyUSB device number)

From there, a simple restart and hopefully, your terminal will be recognized!

And here are some helpful links I for things I reference in the video:

[LinuxForEveryone]

You have a strong on-camera presence and a great voice! So happy you took the dive into youTube!

[mikeyfoofoo]

I knew some old-school librarians that were so fast on the old school terminal opacs that you couldn't even see the screen fully refresh. The management interface was a good bit different with a lot more options. Some of the librarians and clerks would have a lot of quick keys programmed to swap between various functions. If you messed up someones quick keys, you were reading the stacks for lost books (like being sent to the library clerk dungeon). Watching skilled terminal opac wizardry was a sight to behold. Something died the day we went to GUI. Many of the wizards never were able to fully adapt to it. - Nice video, Thanks!

[sethbrown]

Veronica, you took me back to the 80s/90s when I spent about 13 years working with Wyse50 terminals and various versions of UNIX/Xenix/HP-UX.

I did field support for a multi-national in Latin America, setting up UNIX systems, modems, etc. Burnt my fingers soldering cables lots of times making serial cables :)

The Wyse terminal's programmable function keys were a real revelation to me and I made good use of them to speed up data entry.

I ended up traveling with short serial cables which converted from DB-9 to DB-25 or DB-15, male to female, female to female, etc because I never knew what I would meet in a particular country.

And, of course, different systems had different pinouts, so I would always need to have photocopies of the pinouts for each system.

There's a wonderful book called the C programmer's guide to serial communications by Joe Campbell which goes into wonderful detail about anything and everything to do with serial communications, the ASCII character set, the various protocols, UARTs, modems and all kind of serial stuff.

This used to be my life on a daily basis.

One would think that using these terminals would limit productivity, but I remember having 100 users on a HP PA-RISC system with a 48MHz CPU, 64MB RAM and nobody ever complained about speed.

We ran everything on that system - email, word processing, spreadsheets, database applications, program development, etc.

Those old systems were remarkably efficient and productive.

For heads down data entry, there was nothing faster than a green screen terminal. You never moved your hands from the keyboard to click a mouse, so you could get up to high speeds for data entry. I've even seen people punch data faster than the screens could keep up without losing their rhythm, which looks like magic the first time you see it.

[gardiner_bryant]

Excellent video! Love your sense of humor and presentation style.

[ZenMondo]

Great Freshman video! We will be watching your YouTube career with great interest.

[moodyjm]

Wow! Memories! I remember having a little bag of RS-232 connectors and cables and null modems that I carried with me on service and delivery calls.

[subins]

For us folks born after 2000, this is beyond comprehensible !

[baldpolnareff]

Honestly this was an absolutely astounding video, please keep doing more!

[blevenzon]

I think I binged all your videos now. Ahh all is well in the world. You’re awesome!!

[bretmoore]

The “just as nature intended” made me lol. Great video! Looking forward to more.

[bugswriter_]

Please upload more videos about Linux stuff. I really love this one.

[leftforsunday]

picked up a wyse WY30 kinda randomly almost 5 years ago and i'm so glad i can finally use it! thanks sm for this :) just typed in "wyse 30" for the past so many years and couldn't find a thing 💀

[donaldwilliams]

Great vudei! I used to prefer terminals to GUI. I started with PDP11's and later with screen and tmux I could do so much from a terminal. I really enjoyed X-Windows terminals from NCD, etc That was the best of all worlds. Running an office with Sun Microsystems servers to Xterms and serial terminals was amazing. So much less admin work compared to everyone having their own Windoze PC. Thanks again. Would be funny to get an old Xterminal running with Linux. :)

[carlsetzer]

Ok, that was fun. Also, I love the catchprase "Linux is awesome and so are you". I might be in the market for t-shirts.

[popolonyk]

Cool, this remind me early 90's when I was a UNIX programmer using a terminal like this one. Greetings from Brazil.

[michael_tunnell]

This is a great first video! keep it up! Also enjoyed the obligatory clickiness demo 😎👍

[wyatt]

This was a fun video. In the late 90s I couldn't wait to get away from tech like this, but now I like it from a retro aspect. The way you presented it was very entertaining.

[fsim]

I started out my career as a Pick developer (it's a database system) on a Wyse 50 in 1986. I love those terminals. You got a sub because you're one of the few people I've run across recently that knows the proper shell indicators for d-sub connectors. :D You did a great job and I'm looking forward to see what you do next. Now I'm off to go find myself a Wyse 50 or 60 without a burned screen. :)

[aamg]

Way to go!, I did the same with an Amiga 1000 in 1986! Thanks for the video, it shows the love and passion you have to reach beyond in tech.

[Polyglot]

I like how explainable and approachable you make Linux. Keep up the great work!