Artillect's Brother AX-25 Typewriter Is Reborn as an Arduino and Raspberry Pi-Powered Linux Terminal
Taking an electronic typewriter out of the 1980s, this build adds a clacky mechanical keyboard and an embedded Linux box for fun.
Pseudonymous YouTuber and electronics enthusiast "Artillect" has put together a typewriter with a difference, upgrading a vintage Brother AX-25 electronic typewriter into a fully-functional Linux machine.
"After lots of work, I've finally finished turning my typewriter from the 80s into a computer," Artillect explains of the project. "It's a fully functional computer running Linux; you can use it to do basically anything that you'd do in a terminal."
Unlike most modern terminals, though, the Brother AX-25, an electronic daisy wheel typewriter, which was a staple of forward-thinking offices in the 1980s thanks to its electronic operation and correction mode, lacks the usual display: Instead, in a nod to physical Teletype terminals, both the user's input and the computer's output is printed to sheets of paper — providing, at least, a handy hard-copy of whatever work you did.
As an electronic typewriter, the Brother proved an ideal basis for the project — but the resulting system is definitely not-unmodified. The original keyboard is gone, replaced with a satisfyingly clicky custom mechanical-switch replacement, which uses an Arduino Nano to output keystrokes via a UART connection — keystrokes that then travel to the Raspberry Pi Zero hidden inside the typewriter and which runs the operating system, exposing the text-only terminal over the same serial port.
"You can use it to do basically anything that doesn't require a user interface," Artillect explains of the machine. "I can use my typewriter to automate all sorts of tasks. I figured I'd use my typewriter to print a portrait of Linus Torvalds, who created Linux and made all of this possible. Open source software and hardware were absolutely instrumental in making this project work."
More details on the build are available in Artillect's YouTube playlist; the source code for the Arduino Nano serial controller has been published to GitHub under an unspecified open source license, while the schematic and KiCad design files for the keyboard are available in a separate repository.