New ASR-33 teletype emulator with paper tape reader/punch

[Michael Underhill]

I have wanted a more realistic teletype experience when using my PiDP8/I, but real ASR33s are becoming rare and can be quite expensive. I have been using Hugh Pyle's nice ttyemu teletype emulator, which I found on GitHub. It provides most of the ASR33 experience, l but without a paper tape reader/punch, it does not provide the full PDP8/I and ASR-33 experience I had in high school.

I have used Hugh's fine program as a starting point and forked a new project on GitHub. With the help of ChatGPT, I have completely refactored it and added a simulated paper tape reader and punch. My version currently supports only Serial and SSH backends and Tkinter and Pygame frontends. The Pygame sound module now works with both frontends. It has been tested on Window 11 and Ubuntu-24.04, but not on a Mac.

For anyone interested in trying it, here is a link to the GitHub repository:

https://github.com/progs-n-things/asr33emu

I have also created a new ASR33 teletype TrueType font that contains lower case letters, which is quite handy when you SSH into the Raspberry Pi in your PiDP8. I attempted to create the lower-case letters in the ASR33 font style, but I am no artist, so be kind. The font is included  with my asr33emu project and is available separately with its FontForge file:

https://github.com/progs-n-things/Teletype33

Regards,

Michael Underhill