This is a Tektronix 4010 and 4014 terminal emulator for the Raspberry Pi and other Linux systems. It can also be used on Windows and Macintosh systems with Virtualbox and Ubuntu.

It attempts to emulate the storage tube display of the Tektronix 4010, including the bright drawing spot.

To the best of my knowledge this is the only Tektronix 4010 emulator, which makes an effort to emulate the storage tube behavior of the 4010. If the look and feel is not important, you can use "xterm" instead. "xterm" does not support the "write through" mode.

This tek4010 emulator is currently in beta-testing and updated frequently.

It can be used to log into a historical Unix system such as 2.11 BSD on the pidp11 or a real historical system.

This video of a tek4010 demo was generated using simplescreenrecorder. There is also a video of a an animation using the tek4010.

If you want to make an installation on Windows or OSX, first install Virtualbox and Ubuntu on your system. Here are examples of guides for OSX and Windows. Once you are running in virtual Ubuntu you can proceed.

Install the tek4010 emulator from this repo on a Raspberry Pi or Ubuntu. I propose using

sudo apt-get install git
git clone git://github.com/rricharz/Tek4010
cd Tek4010

This allows you to get updates later easily as follows:

cd Tek4010
git pull

The built tek4010 file is for a Raspberry Pi. If you are on Ubuntu, do the follwing to recompile the program. On the Raspberry Pi you can skip this step.

    sudo apt-get install libgtk-3-dev
    rm tek4010
    make

Thanks to Lars Brinkhoff (lars@nocrew.org) to pointing out how easy it is to compile tek4010 on Ubuntu. He also helped me to fix some bugs and proposed many nice features. Don't forget to recompile the program each time you update from the repository if you are using Ubuntu. I have tested this on my Macintosh with Virtualbox and Ubunto, and it works very well!

There is a file "dodekagon.plt" in the repo, which you can use to test the tek4010 emulator. "dodekagon.plt" was produced in 2.11 BSD using my program "dodekagon". Type

./tek4010 -noexit cat dodekagon.plt

If you want to test text output, type for example

./tek4010 -noexit head -n 32 tek4010.c

If you want to test an animation, type

./tek4010 cat animation.plt

Don't forget the option "-noexit", which tells tek4010 to stay alive after cat or head has finished so that you have a chance to look at the output. For a list of all possible options, see the chapter "Options of the command tek4010" below.

If you want to see a demo of historical Tektronix 4014 plot files, type

./tek4010 ./demo.sh

The emulator does use "rsh" or "telnet", because historical Unix systems do not support the secure ssh protocol, and because ssh does not allow using a virtual emulator such as tek4010 for security reasons. You need therefore to install rsh or telnet on the Raspberry Pi or Ubuntu running the tek4010 emulator:

sudo apt-get install rsh-client

sudo apt-get install telnet

If you want to use this emulator together with 2.11 BSD Unix, look also at Using the historical Unix 2.11 BSD operating system on the PiDP-11

Login directly into a remote historical Unix operating system

This can either be a real historical computer, or a virtual system using simh such as the PiDP-11.

First, you need to test the remote login from your client machine into your historical system, using

rsh -l user_name system

telnet system

where "user_name" is the name of the user on the historical operating system, and "system" is the hostname of this system. If the historical operating system is running using an emulator, this is NOT the hostname of the system, on which the emulator is running. See the chapter below if you prefer to login into the system, on which the emulator is running. For example, type

rsh -l rene pdp11

telnet pdp11

If this works properly, you can use the tek4010 emulator as follows:

./tek4010 rsh -l user_name system

./tek4010 telnet system

If the terminal window is closed right away, there is a problem with your rsh or telnet call. Test it first without tek4010.

The following keys are not transmitted to the Unix system, but are executed locally in the terminal emulator and clear the persistent screen:

home
page up
page down
control arrow up
control arrow left

These keys emulate the "page" key of the Tektronix 4010. You need to use one of these keys frequently to avoid to get a mess on the screen, as on a real Tektronix 4010.

The hardcopy function on the Tektronix 4010 is emulated with a screen dump.

control-w	Make a screen dump in current directory using scrot
                    Can be typed on the keyboard or sent by the computer during alpha mode

You can also use the following control key function to close tek4010:

control-q	Close tek4010 window and quit tek4010.

Login into the system running simh (same or different Raspberry Pi)

This makes sense, if you have set up a virtual DZ11 for multiple user login, opening a telnet port for multiplexed terminals. On the PiDP-11 using 2.11 BSD, the distribution software has already set up port 4000 for 8 multiuser terminals. First, you need to install and test telnet (2.11 BSD needs to be up and running in multiuser mode):

sudo apt-get install telnet
telnet raspi_hostname 4000

telnet localhost 4000

where "raspi_hostname" is the hostname of your system running simh. If you are using telnet and tek4010 on the same system as the system running simh, use "localhost" instead of "raspi_hostname". You can even use VNC viewer on your laptop in this case, instead of an attached keyboard and mouse.

Once this works, you can start tek4010 as follows:

tek4010 telnet raspi_hostname 4000

tek4010 telnet localhost 4000

Login into PiDP-11 running on the same Raspberry Pi, using the console

This is the least preferred setup, only to be used if you cannot use one of the setups above. You cannot use the tek4010 emulator running screens, as it is done in the standard setup of the PiDP using the console, because screens filters the output stream of simh and is therefore unsuitable for graphics terminals such as the tek4010 emulator. If you don't want to change the standard setup, use control-e to stop simh, and then "exit" to quit simh.

Because tek4010 needs rsh, you need to install rsh-server and rsh-client on the Raspberry Pi. You cannot use telnet here.

sudo apt-get install rsh-server
sudo apt-get install rsh-client

Now start tek4010 as follows:

./tek4010 rsh -l pi localhost

This should give you a login prompt into your Raspberry Pi. If not, test the rsh call first.

Once your password has been accepted, be prepared to use the "home" key or any of the other keys described above frequently to avoid to get a mess on the dump 4010 terminal emulator! The following will start the PiDP software without using screens:

cd /opt/pidp11/bin
./pidp11.sh

Everything should run as expected, and you should be able to use the tek4010 terminal emulator with any of the historical operating systems.

One word of caution! If you run the PiDP-11 software this way without using screens, you SHOULD NOT detach or quit the terminal while your historical operating system is running, because this will kill the PiDP-11 simh emulator right away. First run down your historical operating system and simh properly, before detaching the terminal emulator!

Options of the command tek4010

Call the command tek4010 using the following syntax:

tek4010 [options of tek4010] command [options of command]

"command" is a mandatory command to be run by tek4010, such as telnet, rsh or cat.

tek4010 has the following options:

-noexit		do not close window after completion of "command"

-raw		do not execute an automatic CR (carriage return) after a LF (line feed)

-tab1		execute a blank	instead of a tab to the next 8-character column

-b9600, -b4800, -b2400, -b1200, -b600, -b300
		Emulate a baud rate. Without one of these arguments, the baud rate
		is 19200 baud. The original Tektronix 4010 had a maximal baud rate
		of 9600 baud. With the small baud rates you can emulate 1970s 
		style modem performance. Early modems had a baud rate of 300.

-full		in this mode the tek4010 emulator creates a full screen window, and
		uses the full resolution of the 4014 with the enhanced graphics module
		installed, scaled down to the actual window size. Use control-q to
		close the tek4010 window. This option is experimental.

Reporting problems

As this software is still in beta test, there will be problems.

If everything works properly for you, but your graphics application produces garbage on the tek4010 emulator, you can send me your data as follows: On a historical Unix system, type

your_graphics_program > captured_data.plt

I don't know how this can be done on other operating systems. You can then mail your captured_data file together with a description of the problem to rricharz77@gmail.com. Pack it with zip or something else to make sure that the mailing program does not alter it.

If you are registered on github, you can also open an issue.

Screen resolution

This tek4010 emulator creates a graphics window of 1024x780 points, which is the display size of the Tektronix 4010 terminal and the Tektronix 4014 terminal without enhanced graphics module. The Raspberry Pi can handle sufficiently high refresh rates at this resolution. This emulator makes an attempt to filter Tektronix 4014 graphics code with the enhanced graphics module installed, so that such graphics codes can be displayed using this terminal emulator, but the lowest two bits of each axis are not used in this case, as in the Tektronix 4014 without the enhanced graphics module.

If called with the -full option, the tek4010 emulator creates creates a full screen window, and uses the full 4K resolution of the 4014 with enhanced graphics module installed, scaled down to the actual window size. Use control-q to close the tek4010 window. This option is experimental.

Compiling the tek4010 project

If you want to compile the project, you need to install "libgtk-3-dev":

sudo apt-get install libgtk-3-dev

There is a make file in the repo.

Version

See versions.txt