[GreenKeys] ITTY

[George B. Hutchison]

Regarding European Service - - -

Two or three years ago we did have 50 baud service on ITTY. No mention of
European tones was ever made or considered.

The European service was discontinued after perhaps six months due to
perceived lack of interest on the part of European teletype enthusiasts.

We were attempting to reconcile the differences between some of the European
conflicts with US coding, such as bell on upper case J as compared with Bell
on uppercase S, and European line lengths, which we adhere to by limiting
our line length to 68 characters.

This causes problems in instances where picture tapes which were prepared
for 72 character lines need to be abbreviated to conform to the European 68
character line. Who would be the one to take the time to go through them all
so as to comply with the European standards?

Another problem is the question of who in Europe would be interested in
performing the message preparation of news items for Europe?

ITTY has been damned fortunate in that we have had the Exemplary service of
Tom Tillson and Wayne LeTourneau for all these years, with a few who
occasionally pop up for a week or two, but most likely find it horribly time
consuming.

If there is interest in European service I don't feel there would be much of
a problem with the technical details.

Where there could be a significant problem is that it is extremely difficult
to find personnel who would edit and prepare material for transmission.

Another problem is that ITTY is a WINDOWS-BASED SYSTEM. As wonderful as
MacIntosh and Linux based opsystems are to those who believe in them, it is
indeed irritating to have to deal with those who cannot make their prized
boxes work on ITTY. To this end I will try and get Bill Bytheway to detail
the specifications he has used to make this system run extremely well (and
ya gotta admit that between the RTTY broadcasts run around the turn of the
century, and the fact that with little modification the ITTY software still
works with remarkably well) and we will publish them on RTTY.com so that
those with the linux and Mac bent can try their magic.

It's actually a lot cheaper and far less time consuming to run down to
GOODWILL or Bruno's Computer Recycling Emporium and buy something like a
Dell GX150 for 25 bucks, put a half gig or gig of memory in it, load XP and
the ITTY Software, and then edit to your heart's content. We might even go
as far as preparing an ITTY Distribution CD such that you won't have to rely
on the internet to get good copies of it.

Europe - If you want it, please step up to the plate. We'll help, but you
must get your hands dirty, as well.

George - W7TTY - ITTY Central