Vintage fun: Prodding AI agents using retro hardware just because you can

From the department of "pointless but still cool" comes word of some kit being repurposed as a terminal for AI agents.

AWS developer advocate Darko Mesaroš has connected a teletype to a modern command-line interface to revel in the delight of interacting with today's AI technology via a combination of a DECwriter and fanfold paper, or the display and keyboard of a computer whose heyday ended 40 years ago.

Mesaroš' project involved AWS Kiro, a Command Line Interface (CLI) and agentic coding service. We would, however, contend that this is more about seeing what retro hardware can be made to do.

Two problems needed solving: getting data to and from the teletype, and formatting the output to work on a piece of kit from another era of computing. He used Hayes modem emulation to deal with the serial connection, and Agent Client Protocol (ACP) for working with Kiro.

Mesaroš used a WiModem232 for the former. …