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Ultimate Oldschool PC Font Pack
- ahakki 9y agoThe IBM fonts are clearly the best. Hardly surprising.
- rbanffy 9y agoAnd their PC fonts were their ugliest. No other font of theirs compares to their flagship mainframe terminal product https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font (the original, pixel-by-pixel, is the one used in x3270, from which this was based)
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- CPLX 9y agoEven just reading that home screen brings back strange sense memories. For anyone curious the main font used for this website is the "IBMVGA8" one. As a writer, I still think drafting things from scratch was best done on a 90's era black background PC running WordPerfect. I guess theoretically it's still possible to do that -- I wonder if anyone makes turnkey systems for that the way some people still specialize in old typewriters.
- digi_owl 9y agoI guess you could try booting freedos from a thumbdrive. Or some kind of console only Linux live boot. And i do believe that George R R Martin is (in)famous for using a DOS setup for writing. That said, i think i have seen a few "distraction free" writing devices pop up on kickstarter. Not sure if any of them reached mass market though. Oh and btw, there is a font selector for the site in the top right corner.
- slantyyz 9y ago>> That said, i think i have seen a few "distraction free" writing devices pop up on kickstarter. Not sure if any of them reached mass market though. Aren't those basically rehashed Tandy TRS-80 Model 100's? Those were damned cool devices back in the day.
- hh3k0 9y ago> For anyone curious the main font used for this website is the "IBMVGA8" one. I feel like I should point out that it even says so in the upper right corner -- and there you can variate between 6 fonts for the website, too.
- CPLX 9y agoIndeed you can, can't believe I missed that.
- csense 9y agoGeorge R. R. Martin (author of the Game of Thrones novel series that the HBO show is based on, probably one of the most well-known fiction writers in the world right now) actually uses WordStar 4.0 for DOS [1]. [1] https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/videos/george-r-r-martin-tells-conan-his-secret-weapon-a-dos-computer-20140514 https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/videos/george-r-r-martin...
- andyv133 9y agoAnd if you've got joe, you can emulate Wordstar with jstar: https://joe-editor.sourceforge.io/ https://joe-editor.sourceforge.io/ It works well for distraction-free writing.
- Xephyrous 9y agoYou can run a headless Linux distro (although that's not exactly turnkey, I know). If you're already running linux, you can hit something like ctrl+alt+F3 to get a commandline only UI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getty_(Unix) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getty_(Unix) Note for anyone who tries this out - to get back to your main session, try ctrl+alt+F1 or ctrl+alt+F2
- gglitch 9y agoLast time I was on Ubuntu, ctl+alt+F1 through F6 were virtual terminals; F7 was the gui. Edit: I've usually been on Macs for the last three years, and I miss that functionality almost daily.
- gglitch 9y ago2nd edit: Alt plus the side arrows scrolls between them.
- LeoPanthera 9y agoOn most modern distros (I think it was systemd that caused this change?) 1 is now the GUI, 2 is a text console, and 3-7 don't exist unless you manually add them.
- JdeBP 9y agoGraphical splash screens in the RedHat bootstrap process caused the change, about 2 years before systemd even existed. * https://lwn.net/Articles/305047/ https://lwn.net/Articles/305047/ * http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/BetterStartup http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/BetterStartup * https://blogs.gnome.org/halfline/2009/11/28/plymouth-%E2%9F%B6-x-transition/ https://blogs.gnome.org/halfline/2009/11/28/plymouth-%E2%9F%... * https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=480113 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=480113
- LeoPanthera 9y agoI stand corrected.
- girvo 9y agoI’m currently in the process of building a case for my Raspberry Pi 3 with a 7” LCD (switchable, so one can use the HDMI instead) and a mechanical keyboard, that boots into my own custom “distro” of Linux that is basically a pure TTY, some fonts, a BusyBox shell and Wordgrinder. While I’m missing the difficult bits (the case, the battery, the switches and so on — I want to be able to use it as a word processsor, a “home computer” plugged into the TV, and a pure keyboard depending on what switches are flipped!) it works wonderfully for distraction free writing. Ctrl-Shift-F1, ‘$ wordgrinder’ and away we go! Best part is, I can swap the SD card out to get the data off it without needing network abilities. Think of it like a DIY Freewrite (née Hemingwrite)
- CodexArcanum 9y agoI've been considering building something very similar myself! I hope it turns out well, and do write a post about it!
- shakna 9y agoI burnt out two cheap touchscreens after failing to follow poorly translated docs. So, I gave up on doing it myself, and got a PocketCHIP. (Cost effective, but less exciting). It's not a terrible piece of kit.
- hnal943 9y ago>Even just reading that home screen brings back strange sense memories. Agree. It's like a smell memory. For me, I'm transported back to playing MINERVGA.
- CPLX 9y agoFor me it's Rogue. Those upside down exclamation points will forever be potions in my head.
- Joeri 9y agoI’ve used writeroom in the past to get a similar distraction-free writing experience.
- shakna 9y ago> I guess theoretically it's still possible to do that -- I wonder if anyone makes turnkey systems for that the way some people still specialize in old typewriters. I still run WordPerfect. No other writing software has come close to making that same experience. Til Win8.1, I was able to get it running natively with a little bit of effort, but it became too much of a hassle at that point. Now, I run Win3.1 inside DOSBox, with WordPerfect installed. It's more stable than the my old IBM PC was, so I'm fairly happy, though crashes do still occur. The keymap differences do take some getting used to when swapping between everyday things and WP though: F1->Escape, F3->F1, etc. Getting files from WP to the rest of the world isn't entirely straight forward, and I've found a lot of the WP->DOCX converters fail with typesetting and other issues, so I just print to PDF now.
- vog 9y agoVery interesting approach! I often hear people complain about how all programs in the old days were more efficient, but I never met anybody who actually lived up to the logical conclusion. [1] > I run Win3.1 inside DOSBox Out of curiosity: What is the avantage of DOSBox compared to QEMU for your use case? > The keymap differences do take some getting used to when swapping between everyday things and WP though: F1->Escape, F3->F1, etc. Can't you just define different mappings in your virtualization tool? (DOSBox) [1] Except for large institutes like banks, air traffic control, etc. working with huge legacy systems, which is perhaps the other extreme.
- shakna 9y agoI've actually done a lot of work with legacy systems, maybe I'm a bit sentimental. > Out of curiosity: What is the avantage of DOSBox compared to QEMU for your use case? None, for the most part. DOSBox is a little better documented around things that might break. I chose DOSBox a few years back, because I still had my Windows 3.1 disks, but I didn't have any DOS disks anymore. Which gave me the option of Virtual Machine + FreeDOS, or Dosbox. And FreeDOS was very unstable at the time. I know lots of publishers for DOS-era software are gone, and so people do tend to choose to pirate if they want to get hold of that sort of thing, but I have and continue to contract to the government for very sensitive areas, so I always have to walk a legal tightrope. So, I can only use my old software. Thankfully, I've never thrown out my floppy disks. I imaged them all in about '02, being in a country that allows you to transfer your owned data into half a dozen different mediums as you see fit. I have actually been having some mounting issues with Dosbox recently, so I might think about tearing it down and building a VM with FreeDOS instead sometime soon. (Though thanks to DOS' super simple structure, that doesn't mean reinstalling everything from scratch). --- > Can't you just define different mappings in your virtualization tool? (DOSBox) You could. But it's just WordPerfect. They decided to ignore the standard, and go with a keymapping that made a little more sense, because of keyboard designs back then. However, I've got a couple dozen programs I use, and I'd rather not have WordPerfect with it's own keymapping and a restart to switch between it and the default. It isn't particularly onerous, just requires a bit of mental task switching. I've written two novels in WP, so the keymappings are ingrained, I just have to get into the "flow" of things before my mind stops hitting the wrong key.
- noir_lord 9y agoYou can get a good setup with FocusWriter https://gottcode.org/focuswriter/ https://gottcode.org/focuswriter/ (don't be put off by the screenshots, it is very customisable) and one of those fonts.
- shmerl 9y agoLinux still starts booting using such font, until it changes to slightly different one (make sure to set loglevel=4 or something of the sort, and remove quiet parameter to actually see text during boot).
- digi_owl 9y agoI think what is going on these days is that the font change coincide with the GPU driver kicking in, as much of what was done with GPUs are now done in the kernel, rather than X, via the DRI sub-system.
- shmerl 9y agoSo kernel GPU driver uses some special bitmap font to render in framebuffer? And how is it working before the GPU driver kicks in and where is that older font coming from?
- digi_owl 9y agoLikely the graphics card ROM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VGA-compatible_text_mode https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VGA-compatible_text_mode
- slededit 9y agoWhen a PC first starts it's essentially an origina IBM PC from the 80s including the original text mode and built in fonts. You can write text in this mode literally by copying ascii characters to a specific memory address. The hardware handles the job of actually putting characters on the screen.
- rbanffy 9y ago> When a PC first starts it's essentially an origina IBM PC from the 80s including the original text mode and built in fonts. Thanks. Now I feel dirty for touching my modern MacBook and imagining that IBM horror inside it.
- ggambetta 9y agoHeh. Back in the 90s when I was making my first attempts at videogames, I remember "reverse engineering" the two fonts used in Monkey Island using graph paper and a magnifying glass :) Good times.
- jenscow 9y agoYes, and I ripped a walking Lemming animation like that. Talk about time to burn.
- arnarbi 9y agoBeen using this (VGA16) on both linux and Mac in all editors, terminals, IDEs for about a year. It's by far the best typeface for me, and I've tried many.
- steeef 9y agoCan you detail your Mac setup a bit? I've tried out these fonts, but end up struggling to get the right size, and disabling antialiasing makes things look pretty ugly.
- arnarbi 9y agoSure! I miswrote VGA16, it's actually VGA8. I'm on a retina display, and set the size to 16pt. I do have anti-alias disabled in e.g. iTerm2, but visually it makes no difference. In iTerm2 I disable "Draw bold text in bold font". For vim I use MacVim sometimes, which hash gfn=PxPlus IBM VGA8:h16. Screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/TBuS4 https://imgur.com/a/TBuS4
- steeef 9y agoAh, that's the kicker. Looks great on my MBP's built-in retina display, but crap on my older external monitors. So far the only font I've been able to use on those without anti-aliasing is Monaco.
- avip 9y ago> ...these support extended Latin, Greek, Cyrillic and Hebrew I'd love to read about who and why chose this wonderfully useless list of languages.
- strictnein 9y agoYou're mistaking character sets for languages.
- avip 9y agoI guess I didn't phrase it very clearly - why for example Greek is there rather than Arabic or Japanese? For the math symbols?
- ljcn 9y agoGood luck representing Japanese (kanji especially) in 8x16 pixel dimensions. Edit: Apparently I'm wrong - 8x8 is acceptable as long as context is given https://chinese.stackexchange.com/questions/16669/lowest-pixel-resolution-needed-to-support-chinese https://chinese.stackexchange.com/questions/16669/lowest-pix...
- Annatar 9y agoThe reason these fonts didn’t get much love is because growing up on ATARI ST’s, Commodore 64’s, Amigas and ZX Spectrums, the PC tin-bucket and his ugly fonts were synonymous with an overpriced, slow, loud, power hungry computer with extremely bad, inelegant hardware with vastly inferior capabilities. The PC bucket is and remains the butt of jokes to anyone who grew up on the non—IBM computers from the era or used real UNIX hardware. When will we see those beatiful Sun OpenBoot PROM and sgi workstation firmware fonts remade as TTF’s? Much nicer to look at those.
- anthk_ 9y agoOpenBSD VT fonts are almost the same. Check Luxi Mono for TTF fonts. Also: https://us-east.manta.joyent.com/jmc/public/tmp/gallant12x22.ttf https://us-east.manta.joyent.com/jmc/public/tmp/gallant12x22...
- rbanffy 9y agoI recently noted Solaris 11 boots the console to the same they used with the SPARCStations.
- Annatar 9y agoIt’s been that way since around 2012, not that it helped them after Snoracle’s abundant blunders. It’d be really cool if they brought the Black-on-Gray console OBP font back to illumos though. That would be a treat.
- Annatar 9y agoCool, I’ll check it out.
- rbanffy 9y agoThe IBM terminals were a totally different story. A sans-serif, simple and elegant design, modern and yet timeless. I reproduced the 3270's here: https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font
- mrspeaker 9y agoThese are so fantastic! Out of interest, does anyone know how copyright for these fonts work? I see a disclaimer, but what would be required to use one of the fonts in a commercial application?
- naikrovek 9y agoIn the US, Bitmap fonts aren't copyrightable, IIRC. Only vector fonts are, because vector fonts are considered software, while bitmap fonts are not. The vector font files themselves ARE copyrightable, however the shapes that these software programs (that's what the court considers vector font files) draw to your screen or printed media are not copyrightable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protection_of_typefaces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protecti...
- rbanffy 9y agoBTW, does anyone here have a Sperry Luggable and is willing to dump the screen font to a file (or take enough high-res pictures that it can be recreated)? Sample: https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/MGIAAOSwFqJWk6Wq/s-l1600.jpg https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/MGIAAOSwFqJWk6Wq/s-l1600.jpg If someone wants to grab it: https://www.ebay.com/itm/vintage-sperry-luggable-computer-20-meg-hd-boots-works-ships-worldwide/152778302528?hash=item23924be440 https://www.ebay.com/itm/vintage-sperry-luggable-computer-20...
- sixothree 9y agoIf that interests you, then you may like this video I stumbled across this weekend. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QikO0WOAGWI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QikO0WOAGWI
- rbanffy 9y agoI thought only Apple II's were able to move stuff by half a pixel to the side... :-(
- jstewartmobile 9y agoThat is a damn fine font. Faintly resembles Iosevka Slab Serif.
- rbanffy 9y agoIosevka reminds me of the Dec VT terminals.
- outsidetheparty 9y agoHoly cow, the look of that IBMVGA8 font hit me right in the gut: instantly I'm ten years old and puzzling my way through the great underground empire. Somehow I expected my petite madeleine moment would be more... literary
- fraesgrel 9y agoI am really happy with Fixedsys Excelsior[0]. [0]: http://www.fixedsysexcelsior.com/ http://www.fixedsysexcelsior.com/
- kika 9y agoAnd for these who need programming ligatures (like <=, >=, >>=, etc) I made my own version of it https://github.com/kika/fixedsys https://github.com/kika/fixedsys