This hotel room has a _baffling_ artefact in it embedded in a wall panel.
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@mhoye [realizes everyone in a room is shouting] wait a minute... capslock is on
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Further: there are three (what appears to be) rj45 jacks under the table, one labelled “data port” and two unlabelled. I didn’t bring a network cable but… I’m curious? I could get one?
Maybe there’s a secret Irish internet?
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@mhoye person asks which direction the ice machine is in, i try to point them down the hall but instead i say "6" because numlock is on in this room
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@mhoye unable to turn the page on my book because scroll lock is on in this room
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Oh my god, these are terminal connections.
In the late eighties, - before the PS/2 port existed because also before the PS/2 existed -- IBM Model M keyboards had metal-shrouded RJ-45 connectors that connected to terminals-as-in-dumb-terminals, like the IBM 3101. For a while you could buy adapters that would let you plug the RJ-45 models into PS/2 connectors, but all that's long gone.
These are 40-year-old keyboard and data ports.
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Ok now I definitely need to get a network cable, just to see if something's still living on the far side of these wires.
I mean, there's no chance. None, there is just no way.
But now I have to know.
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You have to know that if it’s labelled with these ancient stressed-plastic stickers, this is like seeing a url with a tilde in it. This is where the old magic lives, this is the good shit.
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@mhoye I misread it as DATA FORT and for a second imagined some sort of pillow fort but with mainframes.
Now I'm just disappointed. And I want some PDP-11's and blankets to play in! -
@mhoye 'Data port' is probably meant for Ethernet, although it may or may not be connected. Ethernet connectivity used to be quite common in Irish hotels, and has not entirely gone away yet.
But it might also have be meant to connect a modem, in the times of dial-up. Modem connectors tended to use the narrower RJ11 connectors way-back-when, but RJ45 with only the middle positions populated was not unheard of, and IIRC, there was a bit of a push to popularise RJ45 for phone lines in the early noughties.
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@mhoye Wow.
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@mhoye That's not entirely true. These stickers are Dymo labelmaker output, and while Dymo's big advantage, mechanical simplicity, is not that advantageous these days, Dymo labelmakers are still in fairly common use. I'll need to check it the next time I go out, but I think even the sign next to my doorbell button, only a couple of years old, is a Dymo label.
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@mhoye The right hole on this picture, is it a screwhole with a missing screw or, say, a 3.5mm TRS socket?
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@jplebreton Hey, scrolls can make books, too. #NotAllBooks are codices.