Date   : Sun, 19 Sep 2004 13:24:54 +0000
From   : Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk@...>
Subject: Re: CEEFAX short story contest

On Sat, 2004-09-18 at 22:20 +0100, gARetH baBB wrote:
> On Sat, 11 Sep 2004, Jules Richardson wrote:
> 
> > BBC was? I still have a pet project to get a real service up and running 
> > at the museum (and if a phone exchange can be simulated, then it's not 
> > like we don't have plenty of old modem hardware lying around - acoustic 
> > coupler, anyone?)
> 
> Q: what do you think viewdata has in connection with teletext (apart from 
> most of the display attributes) ?

Both are examples of early information retrieval systems; the problem
with a museum exhibit being that it'd be somewhat illegal to broadcast
teletext over the airwaves! 

That doesn't stop the simulation using a service such as pip that I
mentioned earlier (which digging around appears to have been public-
access) across a dial-up link, though. 

>From a display point of view it'd make sense to combine it with a
viewdata system (in the sense that one or the other could be used at a
time by a terminal of some form - whether a BBC or whatever) simply to
avoid duplication of cabling, modems etc. 

And an example of a BBS would be a third option of course. It's a case
of making a modem think it was talking to a phone exchange and I'm not
sure what's involved there - but the Colossus guys know all about phone
equipment and have piles of period hardware lying about so I'm sure they
can offer help.  

I'm still not sure what was used server-side to construct and hold
teletext pages either (fro BBC's Ceefax or others); likely a DEC mini of
some sort - BBC machines for page composition? 

cheers

Jules