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posted by chromas on Wednesday August 08 2018, @12:39PM   Printer-friendly
from the i'm-calling-the-police dept.

Trammell Hudson has written a blog post about his project to retro fit a Motorola MDT-9100T "Mobile Data Terminal" from eBay with a BeagleBone Black running a modern operating system. He figues their retro-future design was too neat to pass up and that the stylish housing combined with an aperture-less amber CRT looks like something slipped from the Fallout or BladeRunner universe into our own. So he and some others at NYC Resistor bought a few and are repurposing them. A lot of soldering and cable smithing is involved.


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  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 08 2018, @02:13PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 08 2018, @02:13PM (#718787)

    who named whatever this is and why did they think it was informative of its purpose or appropriate for polite conversation

    • (Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday August 08 2018, @02:41PM (1 child)

      by LoRdTAW (3755) on Wednesday August 08 2018, @02:41PM (#718794) Journal

      English, motherfucker, do you speak it?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 08 2018, @05:21PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 08 2018, @05:21PM (#718866)

        Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 09 2018, @02:56AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 09 2018, @02:56AM (#719208)
      http://lmgtfy.com/?q=beaglebone+black/ [lmgtfy.com]

      Wow, look at that! A whole page of relevant results.
  • (Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday August 08 2018, @02:52PM (6 children)

    by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Wednesday August 08 2018, @02:52PM (#718798) Journal

    I remember seeing the terminals inside squad cars and thinking how awesome they looked. A cool bit of pre-toughbook laptop technology. I wonder how much life they'll get before dying.

    Nice post, thanks for sharing.

    --
    This sig for rent.
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday August 08 2018, @03:55PM (2 children)

      by LoRdTAW (3755) on Wednesday August 08 2018, @03:55PM (#718824) Journal

      So long as the CRT doesn't lose its vacuum or filament then it should last quite a long time.

      • (Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Wednesday August 08 2018, @05:06PM (1 child)

        by Knowledge Troll (5948) on Wednesday August 08 2018, @05:06PM (#718860) Homepage Journal

        I remember CRTs from that era had nasty problems with burn in. That particular CRT didn't seem to show it though.

        • (Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday August 08 2018, @07:19PM

          by LoRdTAW (3755) on Wednesday August 08 2018, @07:19PM (#718938) Journal

          I wonder if it has to do with the type of phosphor and beam current required for that particular brightness.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Wednesday August 08 2018, @05:30PM

      by SomeGuy (5632) on Wednesday August 08 2018, @05:30PM (#718870)

      If taken care of, it will outlast you next dozen toy cell phones. :P

    • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday August 09 2018, @12:30AM

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Thursday August 09 2018, @12:30AM (#719139) Homepage
      Agreed. I think the coolest thing is that the previously-unknown screen can be driven just by tweaking some device tree settings. It may be utterly bollocks syntax, but it's very powerful.

      He should have sniffed the radio i/f before upgrading.
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by jmorris on Thursday August 09 2018, @02:38AM

      by jmorris (4844) on Thursday August 09 2018, @02:38AM (#719197)

      The things ran for years in the harsh environment of a police cruiser. Now it is a show piece that will be powered up occasionally to show it off. Doubt the guy who made it is going to be using a BeagleBone with a B&W display as their primary workstation. Odds are it will hold out a few more years in that service before something dies of age that a replacement can't be found for. But that keyboard does look pretty frickin' sweet, bet it would be fun to type on. Again, it was built to withstand years of service in an unforgiving environment and it predates Apple's gimped keyboard fad.

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by SomeGuy on Wednesday August 08 2018, @05:20PM

    by SomeGuy (5632) on Wednesday August 08 2018, @05:20PM (#718865)

    One really can't appreciate how sharp these "apertureless" monochrome CRTs really could be unless it is seen in person.

    During the 80s and right up to 1990 or so, monochrome CRTs were still preferred over color CRTs for serious business use. Text was just so much sharper without the RGB apertures required by color CRTs. Green phosphor was popular mainly because that is the native color of phosphor, not because it was easier on the eyes. Amber was much easier to look at for long periods of time, although desktop publishing including the Apple Macintosh preferred paper white. Quite frankly even today they seem sharp and easier to read in comparison to average consumer computer LCD monitors.

    Anyone who gets a chance to visit a vintage computing festival really should do so. Lots of great old ideas and machines that could have been something had markets been different. You might be blown away by how mono CRTs look in person, especially when used as vector displays like those uses on Vectrex games, Asteroids, or BattleZone.

  • (Score: 2) by dw861 on Saturday August 11 2018, @12:04AM

    by dw861 (1561) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 11 2018, @12:04AM (#720127) Journal

    Wow, they used Laplink! It has been decades since I've even heard that term. Thank you for posting; you just reminded me of a tiny part of my brain that I'd long since forgotten that I even had.

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