Google, Wikipedia directly on ASCII terminal?

On 01/16/2018 01:19 AM, Martin Meiner via cctech wrote: Hi, To each his / her own. Okay. Are you wanting to connect to Google, like you would a specific BBS? Or are you wanting to connect to something, like an ISP, that you can then use to connect to Google across the internet? The difference is subtle from the terminal's point of view, but very important. I've seen a number of textual interfaces to Google, usually via TUI based web browsers. I don't think that text only is strictly necessary. 1) There are programs that can convert images into ASCII art. (With varying degrees of success.) 2) Some terminals support various types of graphics. I have recently been playing with Sixel and ReGIS graphics, which both come from DEC VT2xx / VT3xx / VT4xx days. So in theory, you could have actual 4 or maybe 16 (?) color graphics show up on a DEC VT440 (?) terminal. I am 99.999% certain that Google has never had an access-number (ala BBS style). I think you're really talking about an old system that provides a shell account and a text mode browser to the internet. - There are MANY over the years. You could do similar via null modem cable between a terminal and something like a Raspberry Pi. It's my understanding that the WiFi232 pretends to be a modem that can initiate TCP connections and convert them to serial. (Think telnet / netcat.) You could obviously insert a pair of modems and phone lines between the terminal and the dial up server. - I personally would not want to pay for the two phone lines needed to do such. That being said, I suspect that you could get slower modem speeds to work across ATAs & VoIP, or even an old analog phone switch. (I've talked with people about using an old AT&T / Lucent / Avaya 'Partner' class phone system for this. It should be relatively easy to have the terminal connect to a unix system and have it run programs to connect. googleBBS seems to provide an example of the ASCII art graphic. 15 seconds of looking didn't show any telnet (et al) ability to access googleBBS. I've seen and messed with Google60 for different reasons (mainframe predilections) before. - I'm sad to see that Google60 no longer works because "Sorry, the Google Web Search API has been shut down in May 2016." The big issues that I see are: 1) Do you want the terminal to connect (dial) directly to endpoints, ala BBS style? Or do you want to connect (dial) to an intermediary system that can connect to things on your behalf. 2) I'm not aware of any dumb (or otherwise) terminals that support IP, via SLIP or PPP. So I think you're going to need /something/ to gateway between serial and IP via a dial up connection via SLIP or PPP. I personally would be interested in something, like a Raspberry Pi that can function as a shell account server that can accept the (dial up) connection on a serial port, and then gateway to the internet via standard text mode utilities. I'd be very interested in text mode utilities that support (basic) graphics via Sixel (or ReGIS). I don't know if it's help or not, but it's at least feedback. -- Grant. . . . unix || die