US Military Dead during Iraq War 1049
and somewhere
This was part of a longer story told about intelligence gathering during the first gulf war. The storyteller wasn't very technically inclined.
I liked the LA-120, and even the LA-36. Compared to an ASR33 they were heavensent. Quiet, fast, easy to setup and use, reliable, and easier to move around from room to room. IT...
Apparently, in the first iteration, a line printer was modified to transmit (via radio, telephone, whatever) the printed output from the VAX.
That was nice, but the intelligence types wanted to be able to initiate inquiries as well.
The line printer was then modified to log into the system as a terminal (under remote control) and grab whatever they wanted. The storyteller indicated that this was accomplished by creating custom firmware for the microcontroller in the line printer.
How did they get the custom firmware into the printer? Unknown.
How does a line printer convice the operating system to let it run interactive jobs? Unknown.
Looking at my own gear, the wiring isn't a problem. Electrically speaking, I can tie a serial printer and a terminal to the same RS-232 port and run either way -- as long as I can control what the operating system views it as. The trouble with that is that I doubt the Iraqi SYSOP was working for the US -- you wouldn't need the LP-TT custom job if he was.
VMS printer logins Was: US Military Dead during Iraq War
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