Virtual Internet Teletype

I came across this page, while hunting down the source code to WinVN before NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre picked it up.

Do you remember those old movies where the news is coming across the ‘wire’? Or better they are using the wireless?

I’m not sure if they still do broadcast over the air, I suspect they do, but you’ll naturally be required to have all kinds of special radio and teletype equipment. Which naturally takes times, money and effort. And my attention span is WAY too short for that kind of thing.

To get this to run, I’m using VLC, and MMTTY. If you don’t want to go deaf, or you don’t want the ‘full’ experience, then I’d suggest Virtual Audio Cables.

So basically it works like this. You can click on one of the two links below and

http://65.243.191.51:8000/listen.pls
http://65.243.191.51:8030/listen.pls

Which will then kick off your streaming audio player… If you can withstand the noise, crank it up so your microphone picks up the noise… 🙂

Then launch MMTTY and it will listen on the microphone, and suddenly start to translate the bauddot!

mmtty in action

If you have issues, or wish to finagle the audio devices, or perhaps to use VAC so you don’t have to listen to it, first set VLC to use a different audio output (Tools -> Preferences) then I used the Direct X output feature so I can specify which audio card to use.

VLC audio preferences

Then to configure MMTTY, go under Options -> Setup MMTTY, click on the sound card tab, and you can set the input.

mmtty preferences

And there we go.

The Itty news feed is user driven, so feel free to get the mailer mentioned on the page, and try to submit some news.

There is a lot going on today, esp with the earthquakes that are ongoing in Japan, and the unrest, and populist uprisings in the ME.

But now you can ‘enjoy’ the news in a really old fashioned way.

2 thoughts on “Virtual Internet Teletype

  1. No news that I know of, but you can still get meteorological information and encrypted military RTTY on shortwave and below, well into VLF range. My personal favorite is HF-FAX weather maps. Something about hooking up a radio to a computer, having an image come out of weird noises is still tons of fun. Makes me kind of nostalgic for a modem.

  2. Great site ! I have been a radio amateur for 40 years now, and cut my teeth on old Model 15’s, 28’s and Kleinschmidt TT-100’s, LOADS of fun building a terminal unit ( demodulator ) and AFSK keyer and copying my first RTTY broadcast from a weather service on shortwave back around 1970, ultra COOL stuff ! I still have my old 28KSR which I am itching to connect to my PC and re-visit that old oily tty smell and clicking away at that mechanical marvel !

    Mark, WN3SIX

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