8 ms·

Cool-retro-term: A terminal emulator which mimics the old cathode display

282 points by marcodiego 5y ago

mrlonglong 5y ago
There is also a font called vt220 somewhere out there that gives you the look and feel of the gorgeous DEC VT 220 terminals. If I can find it I'll post the link here
- cellularmitosis 5y ago
  this one perhaps? https://github.com/svofski/glasstty https://github.com/svofski/glasstty
  - bitwize 5y ago
    There's one called DEC Terminal Modern that may work better with cool-retro-term. It's a vector font that doesn't have the scanlines in the font, so won't clash with the scanline effects the terminal emulator provides.
  - mrlonglong 5y ago
    Thank you, yes indeed, that's the one.
- Falkon1313 5y ago
  There are also a lot of PC/BIOS fonts here: https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/ https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/
gitgitchinchin 5y ago
this is great! thanks for the share
ryukafalz 5y ago
I use this whenever I feel like playing text adventures in frotz. Great ambience for that :)
caymanjim 5y ago
I know this is just a toy, but the curvature and saturation are massively exaggerated from what using these terminals was really like. This is really hard to look at for more than a couple seconds. In reality, the old VTxx terminals were much easier on the eyes, particularly the amber ones.
- mmastrac 5y ago
  Looks like you can adjust that: https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term/blob/master/app/qml/SettingsEffectsTab.qml#L59 https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term/blob/master/a...
- reaperducer 5y ago
  the curvature and saturation are massively exaggerated from what using these terminals was really like Depends on how much your company wanted to spend on terminals. I worked for a chemical company where we had hand-me-down Wangs from a different division that looked very much like these. This is really hard to look at for more than a couple seconds. Perhaps speak to your optometrist. When I was back in the office, I used this all day long on a 27-inch monitor with no problem. And I'm a graybeard. the old VTxx terminals were much easier on the eyes, particularly the amber ones I remember the amber terminals being marketed as easier on the eyes than the white or green ones I used, but I have no first-hand experience with amber.
  - KerrAvon 5y ago
    I used amber monitors briefly and they were neat because they were different but I don’t recall ever seeing a study justifying the “easier on the eyes” claim.
- ilaksh 5y ago
  If you right click then you can go to Settings and reduce the curvature and tweak all of the effects levels. I hated it originally also but after turning a few things down and a few other things up (advanced tab "quality") it is much better.
- KerrAvon 5y ago
jeffbee 5y ago
Xscreensaver has been shipping a wonderful crt emulator that works as a terminal for at least ten years. It’s based on the older “cathode” program.
calrain 5y ago
I have an old Osbourne Executive, that amber screen is amazingly accurate
masklinn 5y ago
There was a similar program called Cathode for macos. The effects were cool (including the ability to change the bitrate of the terminal, made me understand why ed would make sense even aside from the other resource constraints, even `cat` takes ages at low speeds). There were also a bunch of included sounds like hardware boots (relay clicks, fan ramp up, etc…) But the neatest thing is is that IIRC its “DRM scheme” was that the display would slowly degrade if you didn’t have a paid license. You could also degauss it (though I don’t think it would fix the degradation, you had to reboot for that). Obviously if you liked the degradation effect you could keep it even with a paid license.
- NextHendrix 5y ago
  I wish there was a setting to fold parenthesis in comments
  - schwartzworld 5y ago
    Seems like a fun project. Browser extension?
- filmgirlcw 5y ago
  Oh! I forgot all about Cathode but I used to love it, especially during the peak skeuomorphic Mac OS X era (tho I think it was then called OS X but I can’t remember what year Cathode was released, just that it worked on Lion). I forgot about the DRM thing too, but I was aware of it, and again, such a peak skeuomorphic vibe. I’ve had cool-retro-term in my GitHub stars for years but I think I only used it on Linux. I’ll defUnitedHealth need to spin-up the latest release on macOS to reminisce about the glory days of software emulating software some of us don’t really remember (so I’m now legitimately nostalgic for the nostalgia-ware of a time I don’t actually remember).
alar44 5y ago
For the Windows users, you can run this with WSL and Cygwin. (Maybe you can do this in WSL natively now, not sure, it's been a couple years)
- ilaksh 5y ago
  It worked on my WSL setup.
weinzierl 5y ago
I toyed with both, Cathode on the Mac as well as Cool-retro-term on Linux, for video production. The effect and quality is exactly what I want. My only pain is that they both don't fit well into my workflow. Does anyone know a plugin for Blender or Natron that can produce a high quality realistic CRT effect? Preferably with similar flexibility and parameters as Cathode or Cool-retro-term. All the plugins I found were very limited and most of them didn't even attempt to look realistic. For me quality and realism are key, convenient use in a compositor is also important. I don't care about rendering times. Things I found during my research that look useful and cool but also don't quite fit into a more traditional compositor workflow: * CRT-Royale [1] is a GPU based real-time CRT shader that seems to go into ridiculous detail. * FFmpeg CRT Transform [2] is a purely FFmpeg based CRT effect. [1] https://docs.libretro.com/shader/crt_royale/ https://docs.libretro.com/shader/crt_royale/ [2] https://github.com/viler-int10h/FFmpeg-CRT-transform https://github.com/viler-int10h/FFmpeg-CRT-transform
- bitwize 5y ago
  I'm glad to see you're interested in quality and authenticity in your video productions. A lot of major Hollywood studios just don't give a crap, and composite some green text in Courier or Consolas onto a prop. Cool-retro-term is open source, and jwz wrote some modules (like apple2) for xscreensaver that also have a detailed CRT simulation. So maybe mine that code for techniques to include in a blender module?
- nineteen999 5y ago
  > Does anyone know a plugin for Blender or Natron that can produce a high quality realistic CRT effect? Sounds like a pretty niche scratch-an-itch thing for somebody to write. If you know Python the Blender Python API isn't that hard to learn, although it does tend to change sometimes, especially between major versions, and sometimes minor versions as well.
- petee 5y ago
  Have you looked at shadertoy.com? Searching 'CRT' has about 160 results, some look pretty good though you may have different requirements For example, https://www.shadertoy.com/view/Ms23DR https://www.shadertoy.com/view/Ms23DR
gjvc 5y ago
Used this for a lark, and it gave me a headache. 10/10 for implementation.
999900000999 5y ago
Anyway to get this working on Windows?
hexomancer 5y ago
Totally worth the headache. Is it possible to use this with guake?
guytv 5y ago
wow. brings back memories
nonrandomstring 5y ago
Maybe some missing features: Screen burn. Leave it on for a few months displaying the same stuff and get a grey burned in shadow forever showing 'Login:' at the top left of your terminal. Gauss distortion: Bring a strong magnet close to your terminal to have all the letters suck to one side and stay there for days. TEMPEST fun: Broadcast the contents of your badly shielded screen to another badly shielded screen in the same room (yes that's real and something I've actually seen).
- pugworthy 5y ago
  Fallout terminal hacking mode?
- jvandonsel 5y ago
  How about adding the 15 kHz flyback transformer whine? Though most people who remember these terminals probably can’t hear that frequency any more.
  - parksy 5y ago
    I can hear that frequency all the time nowadays. It follows me everywhere...
    - Sophistifunk 5y ago
      My brother (late 30s) is the same, he's still bothered by anti-teenager and anti-bat repellent gadgets, too. Cracks me up every time. And he listens to more metal and attends more shows than I do, too.
      - parksy 5y ago
        Those repellents bother my kids as well, and they're everywhere apparently but I can't hear them. Permanent tinnitus from far too many loud concerts in my 20s and 30s. All I can say to younger readers is: wear earplugs. You won't appreciate not having tinnitus until you do, then it's permanent :/
- 5y ago
coinerone 5y ago
Combine it with Bucklespring (https://github.com/zevv/bucklespring https://github.com/zevv/bucklespring) and it gets even better.
- bargle0 5y ago
  You can still buy actual buckling spring keyboards from Unicomp.
chrischen 5y ago
This will be a great conversation starter for screen-lookers while I'm at a café.
svilen_dobrev 5y ago
aaaaand will that enlarge the image if the overall brightness-of-all-pixels on screen gets higher (either by turning the knob, or, you know, type lots of text ) ?
- bitwize 5y ago
  I want it to shrink the screen when the virtual 8" Shugart floppy drive kicks in.
enriquto 5y ago
The compilation instructions for ubuntu do not currently work. Apparently, you need to add qtquickcontrols2-5-dev to the list of dependencies. But then at runtime you get this error: QQmlApplicationEngine failed to load component qrc:/main.qml:67 Type OSXMenu unavailable qrc:/menus/OSXMenu.qml:22 module "Qt.labs.platform" is not installed Cannot load QML interface
discardedrefuse 5y ago
Just FYI: it has context menus. So, if you have tmux to autostart when you open your fish shell, you will get a special tmux context menu on right-click instead of the Cool-Retro-Term menu that lets you edit your settings.
abotsis 5y ago
I’ve been tempted recently to drop this on a pi and hook it up to an old oled I have sitting around (that has minor burnin) for status-monitory things. One cool side effect is that because it’s always shifting pixels, it won’t cause further burnin. No, the irony is not lost on me and I love it.
pkaye 5y ago
Nothing like spending tons of computer power to duplicate the experience of technology limitations we had to bare with in the past!
superjan 5y ago
I sat in front of those things for the first 10 years of my programming life. I am not nostalgic for them. If you guys are so into retrocomputing, I might have a teletype for you in the attic. Don’t forget to bring your noise cancelling headphones.
- Johnny555 5y ago
  I did too -- a mix of VT101's, IBM 3270's, VT-220's. Most of the VT-220's were green, but we had a few amber ones, which I preferred over green (it felt like such leading edge tech for some reason). We had a few demo units with a white phosphor, and they were amazing - you could use an escape sequence to turn on reverse video and tell yourself it was just like reading a piece of paper (it was not). I have a bit of nostalgia for those screens but wouldn't want to use one for more than a few minutes. But would love to have an old DEC VT-220 keyboard!
- Smoosh 5y ago
  Ha ha. Chain printer goes Brrrrrrrrrrr.
ggm 5y ago
The scanline was a bit strong. But I am glad it doesn't come with the high pitched whine of the flyback. My adm5 is .. unbearable to turn on these days. Maybe I only worked in universities which bought high-end VT52/100 and clones. The curvature felt a bit overdone.
LAC-Tech 5y ago
Nice. This runs really smoothly. Feel like loading up some retro games :)
timoteostewart 5y ago
For Windows folks, Windows Terminal has a similar effect available. Definitely nostalgic, definitely fun for a minute, definitely not how I would want to work in the terminal. Steps to try the feature out: Open/Switch to Windows Terminal Control-, [Control-<comma>] to open Settings Pick any profile from the side bar Click Appearance tab Toggle "Retro terminal effects" located below the font options
- saalaa 5y ago
  It depends. I could see myself using this for niche applications such as visually marking certain terminals. When you work on multiple remote hosts, it's common practice to use different profiles to visually identify hosts. Say your local machine has your standard and preferred colorscheme but staging machines have a green background and customer-facing machines have a red background. Indeed, it's a manual process but I've seen people use it in most places where a substantial amount of work is done on remote hosts (I still use it today if/when I need to access remote hosts).
  - bjelkeman-again 5y ago
    I deleted an archive tape, by being logged in to the wrong machine. The terminals did have different prompts, but that wasn’t enough.
    - saalaa 5y ago
      It's happen to all of us frankly. Now I also keep the default shell on remote machines. I guess it's a cognitive trick where I feel uneasy at the different prompt and key bindings (I use zsh with bindkey -v locally).
  - LAC-Tech 5y ago
    For me it's the colour of the tmux status bar.
    - boogies 5y ago

282 points by marcodiego 5y ago

There is also a font called vt220 somewhere out there that gives you the look and feel of the gorgeous DEC VT 220 terminals. If I can find it I'll post the link here

cellularmitosis 5y ago
this one perhaps? https://github.com/svofski/glasstty https://github.com/svofski/glasstty
- bitwize 5y ago
  There's one called DEC Terminal Modern that may work better with cool-retro-term. It's a vector font that doesn't have the scanlines in the font, so won't clash with the scanline effects the terminal emulator provides.
- mrlonglong 5y ago
  Thank you, yes indeed, that's the one.
Falkon1313 5y ago
There are also a lot of PC/BIOS fonts here: https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/ https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/

gitgitchinchin 5y ago

this is great! thanks for the share

ryukafalz 5y ago

I use this whenever I feel like playing text adventures in frotz. Great ambience for that :)

caymanjim 5y ago

I know this is just a toy, but the curvature and saturation are massively exaggerated from what using these terminals was really like. This is really hard to look at for more than a couple seconds. In reality, the old VTxx terminals were much easier on the eyes, particularly the amber ones.

mmastrac 5y ago
Looks like you can adjust that: https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term/blob/master/app/qml/SettingsEffectsTab.qml#L59 https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term/blob/master/a...
reaperducer 5y ago
the curvature and saturation are massively exaggerated from what using these terminals was really like Depends on how much your company wanted to spend on terminals. I worked for a chemical company where we had hand-me-down Wangs from a different division that looked very much like these. This is really hard to look at for more than a couple seconds. Perhaps speak to your optometrist. When I was back in the office, I used this all day long on a 27-inch monitor with no problem. And I'm a graybeard. the old VTxx terminals were much easier on the eyes, particularly the amber ones I remember the amber terminals being marketed as easier on the eyes than the white or green ones I used, but I have no first-hand experience with amber.
- KerrAvon 5y ago
  I used amber monitors briefly and they were neat because they were different but I don’t recall ever seeing a study justifying the “easier on the eyes” claim.
ilaksh 5y ago
If you right click then you can go to Settings and reduce the curvature and tweak all of the effects levels. I hated it originally also but after turning a few things down and a few other things up (advanced tab "quality") it is much better.
KerrAvon 5y ago

jeffbee 5y ago

Xscreensaver has been shipping a wonderful crt emulator that works as a terminal for at least ten years. It’s based on the older “cathode” program.

calrain 5y ago

I have an old Osbourne Executive, that amber screen is amazingly accurate

masklinn 5y ago

There was a similar program called Cathode for macos. The effects were cool (including the ability to change the bitrate of the terminal, made me understand why ed would make sense even aside from the other resource constraints, even `cat` takes ages at low speeds). There were also a bunch of included sounds like hardware boots (relay clicks, fan ramp up, etc…) But the neatest thing is is that IIRC its “DRM scheme” was that the display would slowly degrade if you didn’t have a paid license. You could also degauss it (though I don’t think it would fix the degradation, you had to reboot for that). Obviously if you liked the degradation effect you could keep it even with a paid license.

NextHendrix 5y ago
I wish there was a setting to fold parenthesis in comments
- schwartzworld 5y ago
  Seems like a fun project. Browser extension?
filmgirlcw 5y ago
Oh! I forgot all about Cathode but I used to love it, especially during the peak skeuomorphic Mac OS X era (tho I think it was then called OS X but I can’t remember what year Cathode was released, just that it worked on Lion). I forgot about the DRM thing too, but I was aware of it, and again, such a peak skeuomorphic vibe. I’ve had cool-retro-term in my GitHub stars for years but I think I only used it on Linux. I’ll defUnitedHealth need to spin-up the latest release on macOS to reminisce about the glory days of software emulating software some of us don’t really remember (so I’m now legitimately nostalgic for the nostalgia-ware of a time I don’t actually remember).

alar44 5y ago

For the Windows users, you can run this with WSL and Cygwin. (Maybe you can do this in WSL natively now, not sure, it's been a couple years)

ilaksh 5y ago
It worked on my WSL setup.

weinzierl 5y ago

I toyed with both, Cathode on the Mac as well as Cool-retro-term on Linux, for video production. The effect and quality is exactly what I want. My only pain is that they both don't fit well into my workflow. Does anyone know a plugin for Blender or Natron that can produce a high quality realistic CRT effect? Preferably with similar flexibility and parameters as Cathode or Cool-retro-term. All the plugins I found were very limited and most of them didn't even attempt to look realistic. For me quality and realism are key, convenient use in a compositor is also important. I don't care about rendering times. Things I found during my research that look useful and cool but also don't quite fit into a more traditional compositor workflow: * CRT-Royale [1] is a GPU based real-time CRT shader that seems to go into ridiculous detail. * FFmpeg CRT Transform [2] is a purely FFmpeg based CRT effect. [1] https://docs.libretro.com/shader/crt_royale/ https://docs.libretro.com/shader/crt_royale/ [2] https://github.com/viler-int10h/FFmpeg-CRT-transform https://github.com/viler-int10h/FFmpeg-CRT-transform

bitwize 5y ago
I'm glad to see you're interested in quality and authenticity in your video productions. A lot of major Hollywood studios just don't give a crap, and composite some green text in Courier or Consolas onto a prop. Cool-retro-term is open source, and jwz wrote some modules (like apple2) for xscreensaver that also have a detailed CRT simulation. So maybe mine that code for techniques to include in a blender module?
nineteen999 5y ago
> Does anyone know a plugin for Blender or Natron that can produce a high quality realistic CRT effect? Sounds like a pretty niche scratch-an-itch thing for somebody to write. If you know Python the Blender Python API isn't that hard to learn, although it does tend to change sometimes, especially between major versions, and sometimes minor versions as well.
petee 5y ago
Have you looked at shadertoy.com? Searching 'CRT' has about 160 results, some look pretty good though you may have different requirements For example, https://www.shadertoy.com/view/Ms23DR https://www.shadertoy.com/view/Ms23DR

gjvc 5y ago

Used this for a lark, and it gave me a headache. 10/10 for implementation.

999900000999 5y ago

Anyway to get this working on Windows?

hexomancer 5y ago

Totally worth the headache. Is it possible to use this with guake?

guytv 5y ago

wow. brings back memories

nonrandomstring 5y ago

Maybe some missing features: Screen burn. Leave it on for a few months displaying the same stuff and get a grey burned in shadow forever showing 'Login:' at the top left of your terminal. Gauss distortion: Bring a strong magnet close to your terminal to have all the letters suck to one side and stay there for days. TEMPEST fun: Broadcast the contents of your badly shielded screen to another badly shielded screen in the same room (yes that's real and something I've actually seen).

pugworthy 5y ago
Fallout terminal hacking mode?
jvandonsel 5y ago
How about adding the 15 kHz flyback transformer whine? Though most people who remember these terminals probably can’t hear that frequency any more.
- parksy 5y ago
  I can hear that frequency all the time nowadays. It follows me everywhere...
  - Sophistifunk 5y ago
    My brother (late 30s) is the same, he's still bothered by anti-teenager and anti-bat repellent gadgets, too. Cracks me up every time. And he listens to more metal and attends more shows than I do, too.
    - parksy 5y ago
      Those repellents bother my kids as well, and they're everywhere apparently but I can't hear them. Permanent tinnitus from far too many loud concerts in my 20s and 30s. All I can say to younger readers is: wear earplugs. You won't appreciate not having tinnitus until you do, then it's permanent :/
5y ago

coinerone 5y ago

Combine it with Bucklespring (https://github.com/zevv/bucklespring https://github.com/zevv/bucklespring) and it gets even better.

bargle0 5y ago
You can still buy actual buckling spring keyboards from Unicomp.

chrischen 5y ago

This will be a great conversation starter for screen-lookers while I'm at a café.

svilen_dobrev 5y ago

aaaaand will that enlarge the image if the overall brightness-of-all-pixels on screen gets higher (either by turning the knob, or, you know, type lots of text ) ?

bitwize 5y ago
I want it to shrink the screen when the virtual 8" Shugart floppy drive kicks in.

enriquto 5y ago

The compilation instructions for ubuntu do not currently work. Apparently, you need to add qtquickcontrols2-5-dev to the list of dependencies. But then at runtime you get this error: QQmlApplicationEngine failed to load component qrc:/main.qml:67 Type OSXMenu unavailable qrc:/menus/OSXMenu.qml:22 module "Qt.labs.platform" is not installed Cannot load QML interface

discardedrefuse 5y ago

Just FYI: it has context menus. So, if you have tmux to autostart when you open your fish shell, you will get a special tmux context menu on right-click instead of the Cool-Retro-Term menu that lets you edit your settings.

abotsis 5y ago

I’ve been tempted recently to drop this on a pi and hook it up to an old oled I have sitting around (that has minor burnin) for status-monitory things. One cool side effect is that because it’s always shifting pixels, it won’t cause further burnin. No, the irony is not lost on me and I love it.

pkaye 5y ago

Nothing like spending tons of computer power to duplicate the experience of technology limitations we had to bare with in the past!

superjan 5y ago

I sat in front of those things for the first 10 years of my programming life. I am not nostalgic for them. If you guys are so into retrocomputing, I might have a teletype for you in the attic. Don’t forget to bring your noise cancelling headphones.

Johnny555 5y ago
I did too -- a mix of VT101's, IBM 3270's, VT-220's. Most of the VT-220's were green, but we had a few amber ones, which I preferred over green (it felt like such leading edge tech for some reason). We had a few demo units with a white phosphor, and they were amazing - you could use an escape sequence to turn on reverse video and tell yourself it was just like reading a piece of paper (it was not). I have a bit of nostalgia for those screens but wouldn't want to use one for more than a few minutes. But would love to have an old DEC VT-220 keyboard!
Smoosh 5y ago
Ha ha. Chain printer goes Brrrrrrrrrrr.

ggm 5y ago

The scanline was a bit strong. But I am glad it doesn't come with the high pitched whine of the flyback. My adm5 is .. unbearable to turn on these days. Maybe I only worked in universities which bought high-end VT52/100 and clones. The curvature felt a bit overdone.

LAC-Tech 5y ago

Nice. This runs really smoothly. Feel like loading up some retro games :)

timoteostewart 5y ago

For Windows folks, Windows Terminal has a similar effect available. Definitely nostalgic, definitely fun for a minute, definitely not how I would want to work in the terminal. Steps to try the feature out: Open/Switch to Windows Terminal Control-, [Control-<comma>] to open Settings Pick any profile from the side bar Click Appearance tab Toggle "Retro terminal effects" located below the font options

saalaa 5y ago
It depends. I could see myself using this for niche applications such as visually marking certain terminals. When you work on multiple remote hosts, it's common practice to use different profiles to visually identify hosts. Say your local machine has your standard and preferred colorscheme but staging machines have a green background and customer-facing machines have a red background. Indeed, it's a manual process but I've seen people use it in most places where a substantial amount of work is done on remote hosts (I still use it today if/when I need to access remote hosts).
- bjelkeman-again 5y ago
  I deleted an archive tape, by being logged in to the wrong machine. The terminals did have different prompts, but that wasn’t enough.
  - saalaa 5y ago
    It's happen to all of us frankly. Now I also keep the default shell on remote machines. I guess it's a cognitive trick where I feel uneasy at the different prompt and key bindings (I use zsh with bindkey -v locally).
- LAC-Tech 5y ago
  For me it's the colour of the tmux status bar.
  - boogies 5y ago