Question about possibility of host pi sending messages to the ITS teletype Model 33
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Capnrob97
Dec 28, 2025, 8:36:57 PM12/28/25
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Hello,
I have a PiPD10 that runs on a shelf in my office with a small monitor attached to it via the host pi, and I have the teletype model 33 active.
As a test, I logged into the model 33teletype as lars, and from a vt52 terminal was able to :SEND a message to lars and it printed out on the teletype.
My thought is, if it is possible, is having the host pi periodically grab news headlines, weather, etc off rss feeds and send it somehow to the model 33 teletype within ITS, simulating an old school news room getting news feeds on its teletypes.
Is there anyway to pull this off, or am I just wasting my time? Trying to get the pipd10 a little more useful when it is just idling while I am working.
Thanks for any feedback.
Albert Corda
Dec 28, 2025, 11:11:54 PM12/28/25
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HI!
I have no experience in ITS, but back in my youth I did quite a bit of programming on a TOPS-10 system. in TOPS-10, you could open a "PTY" device (a pseudo-teletype) and send monitor commands to it as if you would be typing them yourself. One common trick back then was to send a continuous loop of SEND commands to a selected terminal via a simple assembler program that opened a PTY and channeled the commands to it. The result was that the unfortunate receiving terminal became unusable, do to the incessant barrage of received messages. Nasty, but harmless (what college kids did back then... instead of drugs and video games, it was Jolt Cola, Pizza, and late-night hacking sessions on a free timesharing terminal).
You could possibly use the same approach to do what you asked, if ITS has a similar PTY device available (and I'll make a bit it does, since most of the PDP-10 batch processing applications I"m aware of. as well as OPSER, needed that facility) Just build a send command with the text you want appended to the command, open a PTY, and send the text buffer to it. In TOPS-10, you didn't need to open it for both input and output (unless you were interested in the response from the command you were sending), but again, ITS may be significantly different....I have no experience with it.
Hope that helps!
ajcorda
Old Tops-10 hacker ;-)
Capnrob97
Dec 29, 2025, 8:24:31 AM12/29/25
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Thanks, I will look into using a PTY
Capnrob97
Dec 29, 2025, 4:09:08 PM12/29/25
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Ok, I got to tinker a bit, and on the host pi, if I cat a file to /dev/pts8 the file prints out on the teletype model 33!
Pretty sure it depends on the order terminals are started up on which /dev/pts# to cat the file to, but i will work that out.
I should be able to write a python script now on the host pi to download some headline news and weather reports and send them to the teletype console throughout the day via cron
to let me use the pidp10 as a simulated news wire service and have the latest news on the teletype to read during breaks while working.
Capnrob97
Dec 29, 2025, 6:56:41 PM12/29/25
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Here is a little demo video of what I am trying to do here. I just manually downloaded the test weather report from NOAAs weather rss feed manually sending it to the teletype.
I will automate all this over the next few days and then have a retro style news feed to chatter away in the office every 30-60 minutes.
Lars Brinkhoff
Dec 30, 2025, 1:13:02 AM12/30/25
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This reminds me that the Stanford SAIL PDP-10 had a service that received items from the AP newswire. Users could view the latest news, and this was also available in some form to the ARPANET.
I thought it would be neat to implement this in the PDP-10 emulator. I contacted AP about getting the current news, or historical items, but it was a no go.
Capnrob97
Dec 30, 2025, 9:34:09 AM12/30/25
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Another question. The noisy teletype seems to be tied to the console in the simulation.
Is there a way for me to have a non-console noisy teletype? I would like to send my news and weather to a dedicated teletype with the printing sounds that doesn't also get all the console messages?
Capnrob97
Dec 30, 2025, 10:17:36 AM12/30/25
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I figured it out, I spin up an instance of sty and connect to port 10000, now I have a dedicated, non-console teletype
Capnrob97
Dec 30, 2025, 1:02:36 PM12/30/25
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I got the python script going to download the ABC News top stories RSS feed. The bottom teletype is the new one that connects to port 10000 so it is not bound to the console, and the standard console bound teletype is above it.
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