6 ms·

Color of text on monochrome terminals with green-on-black and amber-on-black?

75 points by susam 4y ago

Trouble_007 4y ago
These monochrome Monitors displayed diffirent colors based on the mix of phosphors applied to the target area. 'CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) Phosphors' Phosphors : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphor Remember, Brightness adjusts the black level, and Contrast adjusts the drive. Picture Line-Up Generation Equipment (PLUGE) : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picture_line-up_generation_equipment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picture_line-up_generation_e... Edited to add stuff
Tempest1981 4y ago
'Cathode' is a fun app if you remember the old days. Great realism, and it's adjustable, including occasional lost-sync glitches. https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/36568/cathode https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/36568/cathode Note: I haven't run this for a few years, and the developer's website is loading empty pages: http://www.secretgeometry.com/apps/cathode http://www.secretgeometry.com/apps/cathode
- TMWNN 4y ago
  `cool-retro-term` is being updated, and is available on MacPorts.
  - masklinn 4y ago
    Yep, sadly CRT is missing a lot of the fun stuff of cathode e.g. I don't think CRT supports adjustable bitrates (baud rates), or all the mechanical sounds Cathode came with, or the hilarious "degaussing" feature. I think cathode also had reflection using your webcam, but I may just have invented that. And I don't remember whether it had burn-in. Either way, it was an absolute joy, so many nice details, such a shame it died.
- checkyoursudo 4y ago
  I used to use Cathode on my iPhone. It was really nice for SSHing. Sadly it has been unusable (and at some point unavailable) for a long time now on iOS.
userbinator 4y ago
Not mentioned there nor in the linked https://superuser.com/questions/361297/what-colour-is-the-dark-green-on-old-fashioned-green-screen-computer-displays/1206781 https://superuser.com/questions/361297/what-colour-is-the-da... is that the IBM PC's 5151 CRT used P39, which is a 525nm long-persistence phosphor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_5151 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_5151
- Trouble_007 4y ago
  >long-persistence phosphor. Long persistence phosphor was also used in analog standards converters (a video camera and precision monitor), as in the RCA slow-scan TV (SSTV) [0] from Apollo-11 [1]. Radio transmission was likely via Frequency-Shift Keying (FSK) [2], and converted to Non-Return-to-Zero (NRZ) [3] (Raw format) on Telemetry Data tape. The video output from the RCA analog standards converter was distributed, and also recorded on either, Amprex 2-inch (tape width) video-recorders in either quadruplex traversal-scan VTR [4] or helicial scan VTR [5]. --- Apollo TV Camera : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_TV_camera https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_TV_camera Radio Corporation of America (RCA) : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCA https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCA Ampex : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampex https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampex [0] Slow-Scan Television (SSTV) : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow-scan_television https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow-scan_television [1] Apollo 11 missing tapes : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11_missing_tapes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11_missing_tapes [2] Frequency-Shift Keying (FSK) : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency-shift_keying https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency-shift_keying [3] Non-Return-to-Zero (NRZ) : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-return-to-zero https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-return-to-zero [4] Ampex 2-inch Quadruplex traversal-scan VTR : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadruplex_videotape https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadruplex_videotape [5] Ampex 2-inch helical-scan VTR : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampex_2_inch_helical_VTR https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampex_2_inch_helical_VTR [6] Video Tape Recorder (VTR) : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_tape_recorder https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_tape_recorder --- Also long-persistence phosphor was also used in Kinescope (Kine), video to film converters. : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinescope https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinescope
bitwize 4y ago
In my terminals I use #7fff7f for green and #daa520 (X11 color "goldenrod") for amber. The matches, to me, are pretty close (my brain's reference for the green is a TRS-80 Model 16 with the brightness up).
- silasdavis 4y ago
  palegoldenrod is stuck in my brain for some reason. Does golden rod mean something other than what it sounds like? A tube of gold? What is colourwise peculiar about a golden rod?
  - Tempest1981 4y ago
    > Does golden rod mean something other than what it sounds like? "Goldenrod is a common name for many species of flowering plants in the sunflower family" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldenrod https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldenrod Although the picture there looks more yellow than amber.
    - silasdavis 4y ago
      Ah hah! Thank you
    - eesmith 4y ago
      Also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldenrod_(color)#Pale_goldenrod https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldenrod_(color)#Pale_goldenr... . Added as an X11 color name in 1989, replacing the name "OldGoldenrod". https://cgit.freedesktop.org/~alanc/xc-historical/commit/xc/programs/rgb/rgb.txt?id=9aa70b7129b5374e39b2869e0a90083c3d4b242d https://cgit.freedesktop.org/~alanc/xc-historical/commit/xc/... .
  - ginsider_oaks 4y ago
    it sounds like the danish word for carrot: "gulerod" which translates to "yellow root".
green_on_black 4y ago
Wow, I like green-on-black so much that I config my terminal and username for it haha. Great post!
- friendlyHornet 4y ago
  Amber on black makes me feel really comfortable, so that's how i set up mine When I was 6 to 8 years old, the library at my school had monochrome terminals with amber text, and the library back then was so comfortable and quiet, so I have always associated amber on black with that nostalgic comfy feeling
  - icedchai 4y ago
    Definitely some nostalgia for me, too. I remember using VT-220's with amber on black in college, logging into old Ultrix boxes.
  - jaclaz 4y ago
    Slightly OT, I remember a non-crt, the Toshiba 5200 (which was more than a laptop a transportable as it needed mains connection), plasma screen that had a distinctive (slightly darker than amber CRT's) orange that was very readable. http://laptop.pics/toshiba-t5200100/ http://laptop.pics/toshiba-t5200100/
  - beezle 4y ago
    My terminal under FreeBSD is setup to be amber, though I basically guessed at the color code.
willis936 4y ago
I've tried many different text color combinations but I always go back to pure yellow on black. Something about it is just easy on the eyes. It's just a shame that WBGR OLEDs don't allow this to be a useable option. https://reddit.com/r/OLED_Gaming/comments/ynf2b8/lg_c2_42_horizontal_color_transition_error/ https://reddit.com/r/OLED_Gaming/comments/ynf2b8/lg_c2_42_ho...
- jayd16 4y ago
  Pretty sure your confusion and why people are confounded by your comments is because you're calling the layout WBGR but it seems to be RWBG. There are no only red or green pixels in your image. The red and green sub pixels are just far apart within a pixel. Greens just happen to be close to the reds of the neighboring pixel.
  - willis936 4y ago
    The issue is that the display is trying to correct for the sub-pixel layout by interpolating over it. Users are insisting this isn't the case and that there is instead a static phase offset (ie that the red channel is from the pixel to the left and the green channel is from the pixel to the right). This might be the result in practice in the one case of yellow-gray transition, but it is not the fundament cause. Anyway, all of this nuance isn't of interest to reddit posters. They're more interested in being the smartest person in the room and shouting down any intellectually stimulating discussion. I was just hoping the high exposure forum might draw out some hidden trick to fixing this issue.
    - jayd16 4y ago
      I think they keep saying the opposite and you keep talking past them and insulting them. Seems like the posters are saying every pixel is showing yellow but the sub pixel layout (not any artificial sub-pixel sampling) produces the artifact you're seeing. |R--G|R--G|R--G|R--G|R--G|
      - willis936 4y ago
ninefathom 4y ago
These types of things always make me chuckle. There are many aspects of '80s and '90s computing for which I'll wax nostalgic, but the monochrome CRTs are not among them. One could hardly have designed a better instrument for destroying eyesight, and I wince every time I need to pull out my lone remaining VT420 for anything.
- Blackthorn 4y ago
  I'm curious to know what you still need to pull out a hardware vt420 terminal for!
  - ninefathom 4y ago
    OpenVMS on VAX. There are plenty of terminal emulators out there that are 99% VT420 compatible. On *nix it's rare to notice that remaining 1%, but on VMS it's noticable.
    - bitwize 4y ago
      Try xterm. Guy who develops it has a VT compatibility test suite, which most terminal emulators fail because they're mainly crappy xterm emulators. Xterm was/is written to actually emulate terminals.
      - ninefathom 4y ago
        xterm? Never heard of it. In all seriousness though... sorry, friend - that's a negative re: xterm vt420 compatibility. Quoting from the [current] author's own website at invisible-island.net/xterm/ : "[xterm] also implements most of the control sequences for VT220, as well as selected features from other DEC terminals such as VT320, VT420, and VT520." That "selected features" bit is why I keep the real glass one around. Paging is probably the most deficient area that I really notice.
- guenthert 4y ago
  Yes, one absolutely could! In the eighties Amstrad sold their home computers as combo with colour "monitors" (really, TV sets w/o receiver). Monochrome monitors (sharp, due to lack of shadow mask) with long persistence phosphor and hence flicker-free were balsam for the eyes in comparison. Mind, other home computers were typically connected to the families tv set at that time ...
fortran77 4y ago
This should be easy to determine by looking up the phosphors and seeing what colors they admit. Here's a chart: https://www.phosphor-technology.com/crt-phosphors/ https://www.phosphor-technology.com/crt-phosphors/ P1 phosphors were green; P3 were amber
zevv 4y ago
I guess I am that old: I started computing on a green-on-black Apple ][, and later moved to unix on a VT320 terminal. I have stuck with green-on-black in my terminal ever since. I love to work in a darkish room, and thus also like my desktop dark to avoid getting blinded by my screen. I'm pretty happy with the "dark mode" movement of the last few years! Also, I wear glasses and find that white-on-black suffers quite a lot from chromatic aberration; green-on-black does not have this problem and results in crispy sharp text on any brightness level.
PeterWhittaker 4y ago
Orange on black with Jetbrains Mono. Took me a while to get vim under tmux via ssh to look right, but overall, so easy on the eyes, so distinct.
krueger71 4y ago
I used info in this article when I made this VSCode-theme a couple of years ago: https://vscodethemes.com/e/krueger71.crt-themes/crt-amber?language=cpp https://vscodethemes.com/e/krueger71.crt-themes/crt-amber?la... I tried to coax all elements in VSCode to use only two colors (background and foreground) with the foreground in only a few different intensities. It might give a CRT-vibe to some. The theme is due for an update since newer VSCode has elements that aren't styled correctly.

75 points by susam 4y ago

These monochrome Monitors displayed diffirent colors based on the mix of phosphors applied to the target area. 'CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) Phosphors' Phosphors : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphor Remember, Brightness adjusts the black level, and Contrast adjusts the drive. Picture Line-Up Generation Equipment (PLUGE) : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picture_line-up_generation_equipment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picture_line-up_generation_e... Edited to add stuff

Tempest1981 4y ago

'Cathode' is a fun app if you remember the old days. Great realism, and it's adjustable, including occasional lost-sync glitches. https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/36568/cathode https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/36568/cathode Note: I haven't run this for a few years, and the developer's website is loading empty pages: http://www.secretgeometry.com/apps/cathode http://www.secretgeometry.com/apps/cathode

TMWNN 4y ago
`cool-retro-term` is being updated, and is available on MacPorts.
- masklinn 4y ago
  Yep, sadly CRT is missing a lot of the fun stuff of cathode e.g. I don't think CRT supports adjustable bitrates (baud rates), or all the mechanical sounds Cathode came with, or the hilarious "degaussing" feature. I think cathode also had reflection using your webcam, but I may just have invented that. And I don't remember whether it had burn-in. Either way, it was an absolute joy, so many nice details, such a shame it died.
checkyoursudo 4y ago
I used to use Cathode on my iPhone. It was really nice for SSHing. Sadly it has been unusable (and at some point unavailable) for a long time now on iOS.

userbinator 4y ago

Not mentioned there nor in the linked https://superuser.com/questions/361297/what-colour-is-the-dark-green-on-old-fashioned-green-screen-computer-displays/1206781 https://superuser.com/questions/361297/what-colour-is-the-da... is that the IBM PC's 5151 CRT used P39, which is a 525nm long-persistence phosphor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_5151 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_5151

Trouble_007 4y ago
>long-persistence phosphor. Long persistence phosphor was also used in analog standards converters (a video camera and precision monitor), as in the RCA slow-scan TV (SSTV) [0] from Apollo-11 [1]. Radio transmission was likely via Frequency-Shift Keying (FSK) [2], and converted to Non-Return-to-Zero (NRZ) [3] (Raw format) on Telemetry Data tape. The video output from the RCA analog standards converter was distributed, and also recorded on either, Amprex 2-inch (tape width) video-recorders in either quadruplex traversal-scan VTR [4] or helicial scan VTR [5]. --- Apollo TV Camera : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_TV_camera https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_TV_camera Radio Corporation of America (RCA) : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCA https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCA Ampex : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampex https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampex [0] Slow-Scan Television (SSTV) : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow-scan_television https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow-scan_television [1] Apollo 11 missing tapes : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11_missing_tapes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11_missing_tapes [2] Frequency-Shift Keying (FSK) : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency-shift_keying https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency-shift_keying [3] Non-Return-to-Zero (NRZ) : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-return-to-zero https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-return-to-zero [4] Ampex 2-inch Quadruplex traversal-scan VTR : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadruplex_videotape https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadruplex_videotape [5] Ampex 2-inch helical-scan VTR : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampex_2_inch_helical_VTR https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampex_2_inch_helical_VTR [6] Video Tape Recorder (VTR) : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_tape_recorder https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_tape_recorder --- Also long-persistence phosphor was also used in Kinescope (Kine), video to film converters. : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinescope https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinescope

bitwize 4y ago

In my terminals I use #7fff7f for green and #daa520 (X11 color "goldenrod") for amber. The matches, to me, are pretty close (my brain's reference for the green is a TRS-80 Model 16 with the brightness up).

silasdavis 4y ago
palegoldenrod is stuck in my brain for some reason. Does golden rod mean something other than what it sounds like? A tube of gold? What is colourwise peculiar about a golden rod?
- Tempest1981 4y ago
  > Does golden rod mean something other than what it sounds like? "Goldenrod is a common name for many species of flowering plants in the sunflower family" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldenrod https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldenrod Although the picture there looks more yellow than amber.
  - silasdavis 4y ago
    Ah hah! Thank you
  - eesmith 4y ago
    Also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldenrod_(color)#Pale_goldenrod https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldenrod_(color)#Pale_goldenr... . Added as an X11 color name in 1989, replacing the name "OldGoldenrod". https://cgit.freedesktop.org/~alanc/xc-historical/commit/xc/programs/rgb/rgb.txt?id=9aa70b7129b5374e39b2869e0a90083c3d4b242d https://cgit.freedesktop.org/~alanc/xc-historical/commit/xc/... .
- ginsider_oaks 4y ago
  it sounds like the danish word for carrot: "gulerod" which translates to "yellow root".

green_on_black 4y ago

Wow, I like green-on-black so much that I config my terminal and username for it haha. Great post!

friendlyHornet 4y ago
Amber on black makes me feel really comfortable, so that's how i set up mine When I was 6 to 8 years old, the library at my school had monochrome terminals with amber text, and the library back then was so comfortable and quiet, so I have always associated amber on black with that nostalgic comfy feeling
- icedchai 4y ago
  Definitely some nostalgia for me, too. I remember using VT-220's with amber on black in college, logging into old Ultrix boxes.
- jaclaz 4y ago
  Slightly OT, I remember a non-crt, the Toshiba 5200 (which was more than a laptop a transportable as it needed mains connection), plasma screen that had a distinctive (slightly darker than amber CRT's) orange that was very readable. http://laptop.pics/toshiba-t5200100/ http://laptop.pics/toshiba-t5200100/
- beezle 4y ago
  My terminal under FreeBSD is setup to be amber, though I basically guessed at the color code.

willis936 4y ago

I've tried many different text color combinations but I always go back to pure yellow on black. Something about it is just easy on the eyes. It's just a shame that WBGR OLEDs don't allow this to be a useable option. https://reddit.com/r/OLED_Gaming/comments/ynf2b8/lg_c2_42_horizontal_color_transition_error/ https://reddit.com/r/OLED_Gaming/comments/ynf2b8/lg_c2_42_ho...

jayd16 4y ago
Pretty sure your confusion and why people are confounded by your comments is because you're calling the layout WBGR but it seems to be RWBG. There are no only red or green pixels in your image. The red and green sub pixels are just far apart within a pixel. Greens just happen to be close to the reds of the neighboring pixel.
- willis936 4y ago
  The issue is that the display is trying to correct for the sub-pixel layout by interpolating over it. Users are insisting this isn't the case and that there is instead a static phase offset (ie that the red channel is from the pixel to the left and the green channel is from the pixel to the right). This might be the result in practice in the one case of yellow-gray transition, but it is not the fundament cause. Anyway, all of this nuance isn't of interest to reddit posters. They're more interested in being the smartest person in the room and shouting down any intellectually stimulating discussion. I was just hoping the high exposure forum might draw out some hidden trick to fixing this issue.
  - jayd16 4y ago
    I think they keep saying the opposite and you keep talking past them and insulting them. Seems like the posters are saying every pixel is showing yellow but the sub pixel layout (not any artificial sub-pixel sampling) produces the artifact you're seeing. |R--G|R--G|R--G|R--G|R--G|
    - willis936 4y ago

ninefathom 4y ago

These types of things always make me chuckle. There are many aspects of '80s and '90s computing for which I'll wax nostalgic, but the monochrome CRTs are not among them. One could hardly have designed a better instrument for destroying eyesight, and I wince every time I need to pull out my lone remaining VT420 for anything.

Blackthorn 4y ago
I'm curious to know what you still need to pull out a hardware vt420 terminal for!
- ninefathom 4y ago
  OpenVMS on VAX. There are plenty of terminal emulators out there that are 99% VT420 compatible. On *nix it's rare to notice that remaining 1%, but on VMS it's noticable.
  - bitwize 4y ago
    Try xterm. Guy who develops it has a VT compatibility test suite, which most terminal emulators fail because they're mainly crappy xterm emulators. Xterm was/is written to actually emulate terminals.
    - ninefathom 4y ago
      xterm? Never heard of it. In all seriousness though... sorry, friend - that's a negative re: xterm vt420 compatibility. Quoting from the [current] author's own website at invisible-island.net/xterm/ : "[xterm] also implements most of the control sequences for VT220, as well as selected features from other DEC terminals such as VT320, VT420, and VT520." That "selected features" bit is why I keep the real glass one around. Paging is probably the most deficient area that I really notice.
guenthert 4y ago
Yes, one absolutely could! In the eighties Amstrad sold their home computers as combo with colour "monitors" (really, TV sets w/o receiver). Monochrome monitors (sharp, due to lack of shadow mask) with long persistence phosphor and hence flicker-free were balsam for the eyes in comparison. Mind, other home computers were typically connected to the families tv set at that time ...

fortran77 4y ago

This should be easy to determine by looking up the phosphors and seeing what colors they admit. Here's a chart: https://www.phosphor-technology.com/crt-phosphors/ https://www.phosphor-technology.com/crt-phosphors/ P1 phosphors were green; P3 were amber

zevv 4y ago

I guess I am that old: I started computing on a green-on-black Apple ][, and later moved to unix on a VT320 terminal. I have stuck with green-on-black in my terminal ever since. I love to work in a darkish room, and thus also like my desktop dark to avoid getting blinded by my screen. I'm pretty happy with the "dark mode" movement of the last few years! Also, I wear glasses and find that white-on-black suffers quite a lot from chromatic aberration; green-on-black does not have this problem and results in crispy sharp text on any brightness level.

PeterWhittaker 4y ago

Orange on black with Jetbrains Mono. Took me a while to get vim under tmux via ssh to look right, but overall, so easy on the eyes, so distinct.

krueger71 4y ago

I used info in this article when I made this VSCode-theme a couple of years ago: https://vscodethemes.com/e/krueger71.crt-themes/crt-amber?language=cpp https://vscodethemes.com/e/krueger71.crt-themes/crt-amber?la... I tried to coax all elements in VSCode to use only two colors (background and foreground) with the foreground in only a few different intensities. It might give a CRT-vibe to some. The theme is due for an update since newer VSCode has elements that aren't styled correctly.