#videotex — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #videotex, aggregated by home.social.
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Hey, I made a video about my AT&T Sceptre terminal, but don’t worry if you don’t know what that is because I cover a bit about #videotex and #NAPLPS in the beginning before inspecting the unit, getting it working, and sharing my basic server application and demo line so you other NAPLPS-compatible-terminal-owners can call-in!
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@keyboards To see how those Videotex-Terminals work, there's an interesting (and strangely calming) demonstration video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJJQn5uYKn4
#retrocomputing #radioshack #videotex #agvision
(source: https://tandyvideotex.com/agvision)
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Teletext Around the World, Still https://hackaday.com/2025/08/15/teletext-around-the-world-still/ #Retrocomputing #teletext #videotex
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Teletext Around the World, Still - When you mention Teletext or Videotex, you probably think of the 1970s British sys... - https://hackaday.com/2025/08/15/teletext-around-the-world-still/ #retrocomputing #teletext #videotex
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Okay, first release is live! naplps-server is written in python and designed to be used w/ a modem so you can take calls from your #NAPLPS #videotex terminal and serve it graphics! Works with the AT&T Sceptre and probably others.
Works great with a phone line simulator, BUT there is also a demo phone number up (or direct SIP details) to try. Warning: that might break if the client disconnects unexpectedly or data corrupts. More work to do!
Anyway, all the info is here! https://github.com/dialup-world/naplps-server/
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The AT&T Sceptre #videotex terminal survived its trip to me, looks great next to a WE speakerphone!
Opened it up to check caps and wow what a number of bodges! Identified only a handful of chips including an AMD 8088 and a Toshiba mask ROM that has a part number only turning up old forum threads of people not knowing how to dump it. I think there are 2 ROMs but I could only find 1. A lot of mysterious WE chips, some of which appear to be gold/ceramic (I think, anyway). All the caps seem fine.
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Big Baggy Shorts: Recovering Data From Canada’s Telidon System | IEEE Journals & Magazine | IEEE Xplore — https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/10927689/figures#figures
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There's someone selling an Alex terminal in Montréal for 200$. Kinda want.
Alex was Bell Canada's Minitel, in limited markets from 1988 to 1990, and killed in 1994 (reason: pricy to use and the advent of the internet/Web).
I remember only using one once in a museum expo about "the future" in 1989.
It can be used as a VT100 terminal (and all the modern fun stuff you can do with Minitel-like machines?) so there's that.
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There's someone selling an Alex terminal in Montréal for 200$. Kinda want.
Alex was Bell Canada's Minitel, in limited markets from 1988 to 1990, and killed in 1994 (reason: pricy to use and the advent of the internet/Web).
I remember only using one once in a museum expo about "the future" in 1989.
It can be used as a VT100 terminal (and all the modern fun stuff you can do with Minitel-like machines?) so there's that.
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There's someone selling an Alex terminal in Montréal for 200$. Kinda want.
Alex was Bell Canada's Minitel, in limited markets from 1988 to 1990, and killed in 1994 (reason: pricy to use and the advent of the internet/Web).
I remember only using one once in a museum expo about "the future" in 1989.
It can be used as a VT100 terminal (and all the modern fun stuff you can do with Minitel-like machines?) so there's that.
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There's someone selling an Alex terminal in Montréal for 200$. Kinda want.
Alex was Bell Canada's Minitel, in limited markets from 1988 to 1990, and killed in 1994 (reason: pricy to use and the advent of the internet/Web).
I remember only using one once in a museum expo about "the future" in 1989.
It can be used as a VT100 terminal (and all the modern fun stuff you can do with Minitel-like machines?) so there's that.
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There's someone selling an Alex terminal in Montréal for 200$. Kinda want.
Alex was Bell Canada's Minitel, in limited markets from 1988 to 1990, and killed in 1994 (reason: pricy to use and the advent of the internet/Web).
I remember only using one once in a museum expo about "the future" in 1989.
It can be used as a VT100 terminal (and all the modern fun stuff you can do with Minitel-like machines?) so there's that.
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Was Prodigy an online service, a band, a rapper, a Pokémon series, a Star Trek series, or something else?
Since I have nothing (sorry, I mean *EVERYTHING*) to do on Thanksgiving, I'm premiering my "online in '89" talk from @demosplash on YouTube in ~2 hours (8pm EST):
#BBS #modem #dialup #AOL #Prodigy #minitel #videotex #teletext #history #online #internet #ANSI #ASCII
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if you're familiar with the minitel videotex terminals, you are probably less familiar with our canadian equivalent: bell's AlexTel system. someone managed to send NAPLPS commands to it and made some vector drawings!
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Because the #Tandy #Videotex hobbyists now have a working server, it is possible to demonstrate the #Atari8bit version of Compuserve's VIDTEX terminal, using a #FujiNet. Both text and graphics modes are fully rendered. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpeaYuWS94o
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So, who here in the #retrocomputing community knows enough about #videotex to tell me what english language resources exist for what to do with one?
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Histoire de retrouver une ambiance plus sympathique, voici un potichat en affichage Minitel
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L'UX c'est important !
Années 80, même technos (#Minitel #videotex), même type de données et services de même nature (annuaire électronique)... sauf que...
https://www.rts.ch/play/tv/a-bon-entendeur/video/le-videotex?urn=urn:rts:video:13517288
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[1/3] in the late #80s Bell canada created an interactive videotex service few have ever heard of called #AlexTel
like france's #minitel terminals, the alextel is similar in design and layout. it houses a small mono CRT inside the plastic shell, and a fold-out keyboard that neatly folds up to hide the screen.
inside is a 1200 baud modem that you'd use to connect to bell's alextel dial-in service
can't wait to try this out on a dial-in #bbs
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[1/3] in the late #80s Bell canada created an interactive videotex service few have ever heard of called #AlexTel
like france's #minitel terminals, the alextel is similar in design and layout. it houses a small mono CRT inside the plastic shell, and a fold-out keyboard that neatly folds up to hide the screen.
inside is a 1200 baud modem that you'd use to connect to bell's alextel dial-in service
can't wait to try this out on a dial-in #bbs
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[1/3] in the late #80s Bell canada created an interactive videotex service few have ever heard of called #AlexTel
like france's #minitel terminals, the alextel is similar in design and layout. it houses a small mono CRT inside the plastic shell, and a fold-out keyboard that neatly folds up to hide the screen.
inside is a 1200 baud modem that you'd use to connect to bell's alextel dial-in service
can't wait to try this out on a dial-in #bbs
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[1/3] in the late #80s Bell canada created an interactive videotex service few have ever heard of called #AlexTel
like france's #minitel terminals, the alextel is similar in design and layout. it houses a small mono CRT inside the plastic shell, and a fold-out keyboard that neatly folds up to hide the screen.
inside is a 1200 baud modem that you'd use to connect to bell's alextel dial-in service
can't wait to try this out on a dial-in #bbs
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[1/3] in the late #80s Bell canada created an interactive videotex service few have ever heard of called #AlexTel
like france's #minitel terminals, the alextel is similar in design and layout. it houses a small mono CRT inside the plastic shell, and a fold-out keyboard that neatly folds up to hide the screen.
inside is a 1200 baud modem that you'd use to connect to bell's alextel dial-in service
can't wait to try this out on a dial-in #bbs
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CW: The accessibility for the blind advent calendar: day 14 - France
Since some time I have been drawn to research Minitel, a French Videotex-based system for accessing information that predates the Internet. It was a revolution in terms of digitalization which made activities such as buying train and plane tickets, signing up for classes and reading newspapers digitalized as early as the 80's. You can read more about it in the following Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel
There were many devices invented to make Minitel accessible to the blind, although the system itself wasn't designed with this target group in mind. Mostly, they were external speech synthesizers like in the case of Lectel:
https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/1986/12/10/les-ordinateurs-ont-la-parole_2931817_1819218.html
or the Valentine text-to-speech card for the Apple II:
https://blog.atalan.fr/valentine-carte-de-synthese-vocale-nee-en-1986/
The history of the Eurobraille company, the makers of the popular Esys, Esytime and B.Note Braille displays, starts also with a speech synthesizer for the Minitel terminals.
https://www.eurobraille.fr/notre-histoire/
As I found out, however, most of France's blind community at that time did not have access to this kind of technology and Minitel only became accessible on a global scale in the 90's when regular PC's did but then it was almost the time of the Internet so it never gained the same momentum as it did with the society at large. Pity as this could have been an opportunity to push the inclusion of blind and partially sighted people to whole new levels.
Always design with accessibility from the start!
#Accessibility #Blind #AdventCalendar #France #Internet #Minitel #Videotex #RetroTech -
There's some #videotex #viewdata on this week's #TheSecretGeniusOfModernLife
This quick photo I took is showing #Telstar