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From the late 1800s to the late 1900s, a typewriter was one of the best tools for writing documents. Sadly, they were largely rendered obsolete by the rise of home computers. I didn’t grow up using a typewriter, but a couple months ago I bought a Brother AX-25 electronic typewriter.

It uses a daisy wheel (a spinning wheel with letters molded into it) and a motorized hammer to type text, rather than type bars (or strikers) like in a traditional typewriter. The sound it makes is unmatched even by the clickiest of keyboards. Each keypress results in a short buzz as the motor selects a character, followed by a satisfying clack. The AX-25 has a 16-character LCD, 128 kB of ROM for the typewriter’s firmware, 128 kB of storage, and 16 kB of RAM.

These specs are pretty terrible by today’s standards. Luckily, it’s easy to repurpose old technology with open-source hardware! That’s why I used an Arduino and a Raspberry Pi to turn my typewriter into a Linux terminal.

Inspiration

Back in high school, one of my friends was working on making a computer using a Z80 for a school project. He had it set up on a few breadboards in a briefcase, and after we talked about it for a bit, we decided that we would try to put it in an old typewriter. We wanted to make our own Commodore 64. We gutted an old electronic typewriter, but never got around to putting the computer in it. For the past 6 years, I've had that typewriter's shell sitting in my room.

For a while, I wanted to turn the typewriter into a cyberdeck. I planned on putting a screen in it, and a Raspberry Pi with a hefty battery. I had that idea rolling around in my head until a couple years ago, when I saw CuriousMarc's video about his teletype turned into a Linux terminal. I wanted to do the same to a typewriter, but I never had the time to do it and couldn’t find a typewriter at any thrift stores. After graduating from college, I finally had enough spare time, and knowledge, to turn a typewriter into a computer.