[GreenKeys] What brought you here?

Mon May 4 22:03:57 EDT 2020

I'm a bit late to this party, but I have enjoyed like others reading these personal anecdotes. 

Let me add mine to the pile-- this might be a bit of a different tune.

I'm practically fresh from the cradle (29) and have no memory of a single teletype in the wild. Indeed, I've yet to see a machine turn up here in the Great Teletype Black Hole that wasn't offered to me by another enthusiast. No, I grew up with 80s and 90s computer and networking technology and professionally went into what I consider more or less one of the successor fields of teletypery, that is IT (I'm a sysadmin, which basically means I'm a jack of all trades but a master of none).

I also grew up at a time where typewriters were quickly giving way to the purely digital realm of composition and office management. By the time I was 10 or so, I had grabbed a couple of electromechanical typewriters from the local thrift store, and I was hooked. I also got hooked on modern(ish-- it was about to be sunsetted) technology for the time, teaching myself how to program a bit (my favorite language of which was HyperTalk in HyperCard, though the version I had at the time was pretty old, and the newest version was still going to be sunsetted), among many other pursuits. In other words, at an early age I got my feet into what I could readily access of the best of both old and new worlds.

Through the years I collected a number of typewriters and archaic computer bits. The history of communications technology has always intrigued me, so one day I got an old L.E. Knott Apparatus Co. KOB telegraph. I built a fun Telegraph Apparatus computer interface <https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipNzelr19HR4m8VhBkRWv7QGOThm8ZLlZHNozZjTB43DkhydQghInFQnkKQY9sIkkg?key=NTBwWnVzbC1tQ0ZlWUVfU1ZFdUdXdVZZbnpERmF3> based on Les Kerr's MorseKOB 4.0 <https://sites.google.com/site/morsekob/morsekob40> work, and then I started researching the marriage of the telegraph and the typewriter-- the culmination of what I had collected thus far. When I learned what a teletype was, I was entranced. I ate up every bit of information I could on the machines and still could not get enough of them. Longingly I'd peruse eBay and local ads, hoping one would turn up.

Eventually, in celebration of a raise at work, I poured more money than I care to admit into my first teletype machine-- an AN/UGC-74(B). While I quickly fashioned a power cable and tested that the machine did power on, It sat, unused, mostly just being admired for a while still.

It was about this time (2016) that I joined GreenKeys, though I remained a lurker for the most part, getting used to the lingo and the regular goings-on, but still generally aloof.

Still yearning for true heavy metal (my 100-pound UGC-74 was not heavy or metal enough, apparently), I happened across a Craigslist listing from Madison, WI (well over 1,000 miles away from my location) for a healthy-looking family of a TG-7-B (Model 15) and TT-7/FG (Model 19, though without the accompanying typing reperf with power supply table. I reached out to the fellow to see if he was willing to ship on a pallet, and he was. About a month later after working out various details and finding a kind local ham whose company was willing to have the pallet delivered at their warehouse dock, I finally had some heavy metal to call my own.

Fast forward a few months when I finally had some time to get the machines up and running, and I worked with Eric Volpe who graciously helped guide me to build my own through-hole prototype of the TTY/USB interface board he designed <https://teletype.net/display/TEL/Volpe+USB+Interface+Board>. He even mailed me some hard-to-find ICs back before a new equivalent IC became readily available.

I got my machines up and running, built some hardware around the Volpe boards, and wrote a bunch of scripts <https://teletype.net/display/TEL/ttyBash> to get them working with a Raspberry Pi complete with automagic motor control and current loop control, and I started dragging them around to various local shows <https://nerdology.org/category/events/> to share the joy. Over the years I've improved my scripts, though they're still not quite fit for human consumption-- they'll get there. 

I've got plans to expand my hardware <https://nerdology.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/9Sept-15-2018-Thanksgiving-Point-Maker-Faire-50-1024x576.jpg> from being able to drive two current loops at once to six, and it'll be in a rack-mountable case with pretty dials, indicator lights, and period-accurate telephone switches for controls (thanks, eBay) instead of the open-air prototypical mess it is right now (though a self-professed electrical engineer visiting my machines at a show a while back said it was very neatly organized and well-built, so I guess that counts for something).

I nabbed teletype.net when a domain squatter failed to renew it, and I have been slowly populating it with hopefully helpful information I've picked up or developed along the way, including a GreenKeys search engine (mostly created to help my own research, but hopefully it can be useful to others as well!). It's still very little, but in time I hope to populate it into a rich source of information.

I've tried my hand at mimicking in a small way the greatness of the ITTY system <https://nerdology.org/category/tty-bcasts/>-- I plan to continue at least doing Halloween and Santa Tracking broadcasts for as long as my gears keep turning, and I hope to start doing live broadcasts when I can get a bit more organized.

I've financed a run of 100 Volpe boards to both get a bunch for myself and to proliferate a great design, and I'd like to finance another run when I run out along with a run of his demodulator board when I get some time to breathe. I anticipate doing runs of handy teletype PCB devices from time to time-- flood the earth with teletypery-- though I don't expect I'll design many (or any) of my own. I freely admit to standing on the shoulders of giants rather than becoming a giant myself, but hopefully that will be to others' benefit if possible.

Most importantly, I've rubbed shoulders with and have learned a thing or two (or a hundred) from some of the greats on this list.

I don't yet have an amateur radio license, but getting one is a certainty. It's just a matter of fitting it in with everything else that's going on. I have sourced two TUs from the eBay, though both of them apparently need some work, so I won't have them copying ITTY or RTTY anytime soon.

At some point in the past couple years, I realized that this obsession is no passing fancy and that I could see myself doing it until I shrug off my mortal coil. So I've really gone all in. I'm in the early stages of building the biggest barn my property will allow (which unfortunately is only about 400 square feet with two levels) dedicated to this craft where all my machines will soon find a new home. If you include the two test sets I've acquired, I think I can call ten machines in various working and non-working states my own (mostly non-working), hopefully with plenty more to be adopted through the years.

I also intend to join the i-Telex network-- just give me some time to build that barn and get reorganized here. Even though our basement is unfinished, it's a bit of a mess with or without the machines cluttering it up.

Comparatively, I'm just starting. My little boys (ages 4, 2, and 0) all greatly enjoy whenever dad fires up the old teletypes, and they'll far exceed my experience in a few years yet if I have my way. 

Give me another 20+ years, and I'll catch up to the rest of you salty guys.

-
Jordan Spencer Cunningham
teletype.net | GreenKeys Search Engine: teletype.net/gksearch
SMS via teletype: 385-308-4898 | Email via teletype: tty at nerdology.org

On Tue, Apr 7, 2020, at 11:44 AM, Jeff G wrote:
> I'm sure this has been done in the past, but figured I'd ask as I'm a bit of a newb here and it would give me something to read. What got you into Teletypes, and ultimately to Greenkeys? Can be a simple answer or a short story!
> 
> For me...I always had an interest in them, and I'm into vintage computing amongst many many many other hobbies. I acquired a Teletype Model 32 and HAL ST-6 last year, and its been a learning experience to learn about the history, how they work, current loops, baudot, etc. I'd love to get a 33 some day, and (hopefully) have lines on a couple older models as well now, as I LOVE the old/steampunk/electromechanical aspect of them, and have several older items displayed in my living room, like an Edison cylinder player (Edison Triumph). That said I'm probably a youngin at 42.
> 
> I'm also a new-ish ham (licensed in 2016) and definitely want to try RTTY, outside of a contest. Also just before the s--- hit the fan, I started volunteering on the Battleship NJ and aimed to help them get some of their TTY stuff going again.
> 
> Jeff KC3GJX
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