Patreon Only - Behind the Scenes.
My next proper video is due out later this week, in the meantime here’s a behind the scenes segment exclusively for patrons.
Comments (33)
Hi Mat - that terminal never would have gone to France! Button legends in English, UK phone plug, 13a mains plug and of course, the BABT green approval sticker allowing connection to the phone network, this was most likely stock for Eire, which ran a similar directory service - a shame this doesn’t allow photo uploads, as I can show you a photo of my Dubln directory listing from 1992! There, they rented them at £12 a quarter and there was premium content too!
Yes it was definitely not for France - it's a model made for the UK and bought from someone in the UK - it comes with UK instructions. I'm not sure where you picked up on the fact that I believed it was for France - other than it being made by the French company Alcatel. The only thing I mentioned was that France was the main user of Minitel devices.
Have you seen the minitel video from RetroManCave?
Yes I have - I've posted a comment to him under it too.
Thanks for this Mat. Love these “au natural” videos.
Whereas a pioneer sx series is bring top dollar, its craftsmanship and style mate
Dunno mate but I don't know anyone snapping up iPhones for posterity
You'll see me mention something similar in the next video...uploading at the moment.
Do smart devices of this day and age have the same "je ne sais quoi" or just plain style as old devices?
Matt not sure if your watching comments on your older videos but I had a profound realization after a few pints... with all this emphasis on "the cloud" these days with google this and Apple that and office 365 it's remarkably like the old terminal days where we have dumb devices and push the computing to another bloke. Cheers from one old man to another
No you're right - we've gone full circle...and just like this terminal, when the other end isn't there any more, all you have left is a prop for a puppet.
Watching someone else enjoy an unbox wafting is good vicarious fun! While the polished videos are more detailed and informative, these casual takes are more realistic, a nice watch, relaxing with breakfast and coffee. 'Film' them all!
Wonder if you could emulate the Minitel network on a PC with a modem hooked directly up to the terminal? Then whatever the terminal dialed, the PC would answer. Didn't find anything obvious on google though.
Also would be fun to see the muppets banging on a Pocketmail device haha. My grandparents used one of them for a while. I could rarely get them to check it when they went out of town though...
Wonder if you could emulate the Minitel network on a PC with a modem hooked directly up to the terminal? Then whatever the terminal dialed, the PC would answer. Didn't find anything obvious on google though.
I really enjoyed this. Keep 'em coming!
Scratching my head with that thing Matt.
Gah. Stupid typing on glass. I'm scratching my head because it's got a BT conformity sticker and a BT plug. So not French??? Also, sadly I spent a fair amount of time in France as a kid. I don't remember anyone having a terminal, even though I did see them on tomorrow's world. Sat in my loft I have the piece of kit that would have been sat the other end of the line. If I get time, I'll hook it up to my PBX and give you a number to call (local, wink wink nudge nudge).
Both your Alcatel Mini-Terminal and its over-sized bag of silica gel reminded of an Apple //c I have stored in the basement, sealed in a large drum. The drum originally held Lecithin and to keep that dry it was accompanied by a big sack of silica gel. I left one or two of these gel bags in there, so I hope my old //c (and Apple Imagewriter) lights up as nicely as your Mini-Terminal did, but at 30 years since it last ran, I'm not hopeful. And even if it does, I'll have to also find the OS floppy to run on it :)
Never had a terminal, but in my first job (1997) I used videotex for managing my company's bank account. Even then it felt archaic. The interesting technical part is that the speed was asymetric (75 send and 1200 receive in bps), like ADSL now. I still have two modems (2400 bps external and a 300 bps acoustic coupler) and a home phone exchange. If I wasn't watching your video's, I might have time setting up a demo. You can do this too.
P.S. Barry is perfect! I used to know a Barry he tried so hard to be cool and always failed miserably.
That was fun. I was on a camping holiday in France about 25 years ago and trying to find the phone number of some friends over there. When the little camp office - not much more than a shed looked it up on screen I was amazed! It even found the right number, too!
Cool I had no idea, I found someone experimenting with one of these and Raspbery Pi, doesn't look all that easy to do though ? - <a href="http://pila.fr/wordpress/?p=361" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://pila.fr/wordpress/?p=361</a>
Thank you for this! Loved it! "Oh! Beep!" 😂
So nice of You to make special videos for Patreons. I really enjoy these small unscripted cookies. :-) And Your comment "Oh Bip" was priceless. :-D
What are the Muppets going to upgrade to in a later episode, an Amstrad E-m@iler perhaps? ;-)
I did think about one of those. A true Trabant of connected devices.
How pleasant! Cool to see stuff like this come up in my feed.
That's cool. I can't wait to see the YouTube Pedant beating away on that clicky keyboard to vent his frustrations about your videos. ;-)
That bag of stuff = desiccant :)
Muppet breakfast cereal.
Now you need to find the mainframe/server part of this so you can setup your own little network :)
I wish there was still somewhere to dial, just for the heck of it. However this is the closest you can get to using one nowadays. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5CltdZktlw" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5CltdZktlw</a> ( "You can do that with a Raspberry Pi")