From instructables user Tymkrs:
Back in my day the internet was a dumb terminal connected at 300 baud through an acoustic coupler to a timeshare system, and we liked it!
Ok I’m not actually that old, but how amazing it must have been to be using telephones to connect up to the ARPANET before it was legal to even connect a modem directly to your phone line (yeah for real, direct modems were illegal)!
This time period was so magical! The computer industry and telecommunications industry were colliding like two galaxies, and no one had any idea how it would all pan out. I may not be old enough to have lived through it, but the tech that fueled this paradigm shift to a new age is still around, collecting dust in surplus stores and buried in boxes in our grandfather’s basements.
I recently acquired an early 300 baud acoustic coupler (how modems worked before you were allowed to connect modems directly to a phone jack). Let’s dust it off and build our own dumb terminal using an old phone, the coupler, a Raspberry Pi, some wires, a few capacitors, a serial transceiver chip, and some solder!
Get off my lawn with your newfangled 4G. Where did I leave my teeth? Here we go!
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!