I took some time during the holiday to get the Minitel I inherited from the parents-in-law connected to my home server. As I already run Asterisk on the server and have analogue telephony hardware, I wanted to use the analogue dialup modem rather than opting for the serial port available on some Minitel terminals.

Overall the setup is:

Analogue Phone + Minitel Terminal => Grandstream ATA => Asterisk => SoftModem => Python Minitel Server

Here is a video showing initial connection and navigating to some adult content of the era:

A second attempt at the tutorial from Penta was reasonably successful.

The first attempt was most definitely not: the collet I used didn’t tighten up on the workpiece enough and the workpiece moved towards the mill during the operation. As I looked on in awe at the increasing size of the chips without thinking to intervene, the mill eventually plunged into the workpiece which then moved and snapped the mill. I have video but won’t publish that… As I said: not successful, beginner chips 🥹

Over a long duration I finally constructed the Pocket NC enclosure. And now after an even longer period of time I am posting about it.

Features include:

• (reasonably) soft close/open with gas struts
• high visibility with clear perspex on four sides
• elevated mounting of Pocket NC to allow longer stock in the ER40 collet
• enclosure open signal integration with Pocket NC
• internal iPhone mount for video recording of CNC sessions 🤓
• integrated LED lighting
• lighting partially switches off when opening to avoid blinding the user 😎