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ArsTechnica has a fun project--hacking a TRS-80 to get online:
The true test of a man's patience is crimping pins onto the end of a cable that leads to building a custom serial cable—especially if it's the first time you've even handled a serial cable in a decade. So as I searched under my desk, using my phone for a flashlight, I wondered whether I had finally found the IT project that would send me over the edge. On a recent day, I set out to turn my recently acquired vintage Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100 computer into a working Internet terminal. And at this moment, I crawled on the floor looking for a DB-25 connector's little gold pin that I had dropped for the sixth—or maybe sixteenth—time.
Thankfully, I underestimated my patience/techno-masochism/insanity. Only a week later, I successfully logged in to Ars' editorial IRC channel from the Model 100. And seeing as this machine first saw the market in 1983, it took a substantial amount of help: a Raspberry Pi, a little bit of BASIC code, and a hidden file from the website of a certain Eric S. Raymond.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday August 05 2015, @09:26PM
The article author was looking for stuff to do, I used to connect to cisco routers and make config changes. This was a long time ago. The keyboard is really nice, better (likely more expensive) than you'll find on any modern laptop. The 40 character display was/is a PITA. Sold it off on ebay, I think.
I remember having no issues connecting, in the very old days (pre 2000) cisco sold/gave away nice console 8pin modular (like an ethernet) to 25 pin rs232 official cisco branded cable and I don't think it needed a null modem, plug and play.
Log in, change something or check an interface or route or whatever, log out. Very convenient.
There is a 300 baud direct connect modem built in, that would be entertaining.
If he had a 200, the only real difference is the 200 had 80 column screen and about 1/4 the battery life. That could be more useful today.
Oh yeah, battery life, the thing ran about a month when powered off (static ram drain) and powered up it must have run for days, maybe. It was pretty amazing. And when the batteries died you put new AAs in and it was back instantly, no waiting hours to charge. I believe it used four AA and there was a memory clear switch underneath the batteries?
It was extremely low latency, from hitting the power switch to screwing around with a serial port was shorter than the time it took a monitor to warm up. No windows box, thats for sure. Pretty cool.
Note that its just a terminal, its not like he's running an IP stack on the thing. Even worse he's just plugging into a rasp pi instead of plugging a keyboard and monitor into the pi, kinda lame.