Well I had a good play with the Teletel emulator last night
on my Model B and Wi-modem232, and kind of established
a way to get around the available servers and the limitations
of use.
There is obviously a ton of info on Minitel and its' remnants all
over Youtube and the wider Internet but just thought I'd share
how I got access using a ModelB.
The Minitel emulator client I am using is the "Teletel Emulator" by
Aldoda International. i will be making it available for Download
on Night Owl but it's also available on John Dale's Flaxcottage archive.
Many thanks to John for preserving this. there are other Aldoda
Comms titles which have disappeared into the ether namely "Squeak"
which was a clever AMX mouse driven Viewdata and ASCII terminal
program which I have yet to find.
A Host operating on a Raspberry Pi3 offers a tribute version of Teletel
for those who still use their old Minitel terminals, but being over TCP/IP
can also be accessed by other Terminals. There are plenty other amateur
servers, or so I have read, but these are mainly dialup and keep faithful
to the original hardware. If you fancy paying the dialup phone costs
numbers to these services are available here.
https://www.museeminitel.fr/2018/07/3614hacker/
You can connect via home.teletel.org:9000
At login you will be presented with what is the authentic Minitel
splash screen which describe the call charge in francs per min so
nostalgia is thick in the air. Cool.
The client prog is fairly clunky but usable. Ctrl F2 brings up the settings
page to set Baud rate/ dial method and Screen colours. You get to choose
the dominant hues that will render each frame. I just left it at Red and Green.
CTRL F7 will bring up a reference page for key presses e,g for French grammar,
inflections,accents etc and how to navigate. Arrow keys are used to step
through frames. When ATDT' ing into the system, the TAB key produces a
carriage return. Once logged in the return key operates normally.
At the first screen at "code du service" you normally enter the service you require.
In the past many of the services available were chargeable and the expensive
number prefixes used were widely known by their costliness. If you chose a 3615
service I believe it was a premium charge service. For our purposes here just
type HACKER to access this system which is pretty much a BBS service
for Minitel Terminals with games, messaging, chat etc.When the HACKER service opens just type "GUEST" for username
and password and it will let you in. You are then presented with a Menu.From here there are number options for messaging, chat, and Games
and other info about HACKER .. Pressing F8 will bring up also bring
up a Server Guide.
Games (JEUX)Messaging / chatThere was another individual online at the time I was on and my
pigeon French did elicit a reply "TA" lol .. It is obviously slow for
a non French speaker getting around this. I found myself using
my phone and Google LENS to quickly translate the pages.
But it was still novel to explore..
I also found the system hung up at times and I couldn't get any
response from it .. sometimes I had to disconnect and logon
again, on others F9 worked by taking me back to the
Teletel front page. Could've been me hitting wrong keys or
this old Beeb software not sending codes that this (maybe more
contemporary?) server understands.
As I mentioned there are others available via dialup and Telnet
according to https://www.museeminitel.fr/2018/07/3614hacker/
but I couldn't so far connect to them. Dialup servers I haven't yet
tried. RetroCampus BBS does deliver a Minitel display as one of
its' display options and I can recommend that also using this client.
There will be a Night Owl blog post on this later and the ROM will
be available to download in the Night Owl Telesoftware section.
![:D]( "Very Happy")
on my Model B and Wi-modem232, and kind of established
a way to get around the available servers and the limitations
of use.
There is obviously a ton of info on Minitel and its' remnants all
over Youtube and the wider Internet but just thought I'd share
how I got access using a ModelB.
The Minitel emulator client I am using is the "Teletel Emulator" by
Aldoda International. i will be making it available for Download
on Night Owl but it's also available on John Dale's Flaxcottage archive.
Many thanks to John for preserving this. there are other Aldoda
Comms titles which have disappeared into the ether namely "Squeak"
which was a clever AMX mouse driven Viewdata and ASCII terminal
program which I have yet to find.
A Host operating on a Raspberry Pi3 offers a tribute version of Teletel
for those who still use their old Minitel terminals, but being over TCP/IP
can also be accessed by other Terminals. There are plenty other amateur
servers, or so I have read, but these are mainly dialup and keep faithful
to the original hardware. If you fancy paying the dialup phone costs
numbers to these services are available here.
https://www.museeminitel.fr/2018/07/3614hacker/
You can connect via home.teletel.org:9000
At login you will be presented with what is the authentic Minitel
splash screen which describe the call charge in francs per min so
nostalgia is thick in the air. Cool.
The client prog is fairly clunky but usable. Ctrl F2 brings up the settings
page to set Baud rate/ dial method and Screen colours. You get to choose
the dominant hues that will render each frame. I just left it at Red and Green.
CTRL F7 will bring up a reference page for key presses e,g for French grammar,
inflections,accents etc and how to navigate. Arrow keys are used to step
through frames. When ATDT' ing into the system, the TAB key produces a
carriage return. Once logged in the return key operates normally.
At the first screen at "code du service" you normally enter the service you require.
In the past many of the services available were chargeable and the expensive
number prefixes used were widely known by their costliness. If you chose a 3615
service I believe it was a premium charge service. For our purposes here just
type HACKER to access this system which is pretty much a BBS service
for Minitel Terminals with games, messaging, chat etc.When the HACKER service opens just type "GUEST" for username
and password and it will let you in. You are then presented with a Menu.From here there are number options for messaging, chat, and Games
and other info about HACKER .. Pressing F8 will bring up also bring
up a Server Guide.
Games (JEUX)Messaging / chatThere was another individual online at the time I was on and my
pigeon French did elicit a reply "TA" lol .. It is obviously slow for
a non French speaker getting around this. I found myself using
my phone and Google LENS to quickly translate the pages.
But it was still novel to explore..
I also found the system hung up at times and I couldn't get any
response from it .. sometimes I had to disconnect and logon
again, on others F9 worked by taking me back to the
Teletel front page. Could've been me hitting wrong keys or
this old Beeb software not sending codes that this (maybe more
contemporary?) server understands.
As I mentioned there are others available via dialup and Telnet
according to https://www.museeminitel.fr/2018/07/3614hacker/
but I couldn't so far connect to them. Dialup servers I haven't yet
tried. RetroCampus BBS does deliver a Minitel display as one of
its' display options and I can recommend that also using this client.
There will be a Night Owl blog post on this later and the ROM will
be available to download in the Night Owl Telesoftware section.
Statistics: Posted by brianmartin_2001 — Sat Jul 20, 2024 11:34 am