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Philips HCS80 Videotex Terminal (Videotel / Minitel)

Philips HCS80

Autopsy:

from Wikipedia:

The Minitel (Videotel) was a Videotex online service accessible through the telephone  lines, and is considered one of the world’s most successful pre-World Wide Web online services.

It was launched in France in 1982 by the PTT (Poste, Téléphone et Télécommunications; divided since 1991 between France Télécom and La Poste). From its early days, users could make online purchases, make train reservations, check stock prices, search the telephone directory, and chat in a similar way to that now made possible by the Internet.

source: wikipedia linux terminal

  1. July 20th, 2016 at 16:59 | #1

    This Italien release of famous French videotex terminal doing Videotex as well as Viewdata and probably vt100 could be used as a “free” Linux (Unix) terminal with :

    $ wget http://canal.chez.com/mntl.ti ; tic mntl.ti

    export TERM=minitel1 (or m1-nb) for videotex (CEPT 2 ?)
    export TERM=viewdata for viewdata (CEPT 3 ?) -worse than videotex-
    export TERM=minitel1b-80 (or m1b-x80) for ASCII vt100 [to be verfied]

    Alex. – http://canal.chez.com/mntl.ti

  2. Ben
    June 14th, 2018 at 20:42 | #2

    Hey there, I just got my hands on the Philips Minitel 1 from ebay. Thing won’t power up, not a beep, not a light, nothing. I think it got damaged in shipping. Anyway, I am fairly competent at doing recaps and the like, question is, how do you open this thing? I don’t see any screws, only what look like tabs. I see you got one open, any advice? I’d like to keep form damaging the case. Thanks. you can email me back at benpleasure1@yahoo.com if that is easier. Thanks.

  3. Tomasz
    May 16th, 2020 at 20:34 | #3

    Hi Everyone.
    How much is it?

  4. March 29th, 2023 at 08:59 | #4

    Using this ESP32-based board is possibile to use a Minitel in a lot of creative ways:
    https://www.tindie.com/products/iodeo/minitel-esp32-dev-board/

    I did this video, showing a “universal client” I did for connecting through SSH, Telnet and Websocket with that ESP32:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aJAwi0FqDo

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