*** What's that hardware? ***
In my little office, I've been setting up my "smol web" corner. Some may call
it a "90's corner" either way, my new pieces arrived via fedex today.
I setup a little Mini-PC (Intel N100 based) with Ubuntu Server 24.10... not
old school I know... And I picked up a USB to RS-232 adapter, and got a null
modem cable.
Right in the center, sits my "new" IBM 3153 InfoWindow II with a refurbished
Model M PS/2 keyboard. I had initially gone with a Wyse WY60 Amber screen, but
the wy60 emulation under Linux is very poor, and I couldn't sync the port to
anything above 19200bps.
Next to that I have a set of mini Stereo speakers, and
a Sony LAM-Z05 CD/Minidisc bookshelf stereo - fresh from Japan!
*** The Setup ***
Sitting at a green-screen is honestly quite nice, once you get used to it. No
mouse for navigation, no distracting notifications. Just a totally pure
experience.
The IBM Terminal is stable at 115200bps, and with a screen refresh of 82Hz,
the experience is about as late-90's buttery smooth as you can get. 80x24 is
the perfect way to experience Gopher for sure!
*** Apps? ***
First and foremost, as mentioned above - I'm running Modern Ubuntu Linux. I
wanted as modern an experience as possible, but just with the terminal
interface.
"Window Manager" -- TMUX. When I first looked into tmux, i hated it! Now that
I've taken the time to work out its quirks, I really enjoy it. I'll most
likely switch to "Screen" ar some point so that I dont lose row 24 at the
screen bottom to the status bar.
"News" -- Newsboat. I completely forgot what it was like to read an article
without a half page ad on the screen that I can't close because the "X" keeps
moving and my fingers are too fat! It is a shame that most news sites have
removed full-text articles in their RSS, but there are plenty of good RSS
sites still out there.
"Gopher" -- I've been using the "gopher" browser in favor of lynx. I like the
navigation, and it's nice and snappy.
"Browser" -- Lynx. I tried w3m, but Lynx just works well on the IBM terminal.
"Email" -- Alpine. I used to use Pine back in the day, so I never got used to
mutt. It is what it is. Alpine is adequate, and I can send/receive. Not much
else to say on that one.
"Music" -- mpv. I've got the CD/MD player and it's wonderful, but I also have
a sizeable FLAC collection on the mini-pc... so I cheated and have a line-out
cable running from the mini to the speakers. FYI, if anyone needs to know how
to use your audio device from a remote terminal - it took me a long time to
figure out - here's the cheat:
$ sudo usermod -aG audio $USER
^^^^-- That'll do it!
With MPV I even have a silly bash script I wrote that lets me play LofiGirl
and some other live Youtube channels. I'll post it on my gopher sometime soon
- once I figure out how :-D
"AI" Gemini-CLI / ASCIIChat. I found an application on Github that
lets you enter your Gemini-API key and chat directly with Google Gemini.
There's no UI, just "human:" "AI:" I liked it so much, that I worked up an
application called asciichat in GO. It's designed specifically for
non-scrolling terminals, and lets you talk to any ollama server you like. I'll
drop the source-code in my repository too.
*** Cheating? Probably... ***
So given everything I've setup, it's definitely not an old-school setup in the
traditional purist sense, but it's definitley exactly what I needed to stop
doom-scrolling, and focus on my task at hand.
