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I felt a wave of nostalgia at the title and the first photograph, so I was shocked to read the conclusion that “No one really misses amber monitors today”. Whe

I felt a wave of nostalgia at the title and the first photograph, so I was shocked to read the conclusion that “No one really misses amber monitors today”. When I was an undergraduate in the mid '90s, my college had a row of terminals linked to the central university computer (which I think was a DEC Alpha). Most of them were green, but one was amber. That was my favourite, which I always used if I could. I liked the softness of it, compared to the harsh green. So yes, I do miss amber monitors today. And as with all nostalgia, I suppose what I really miss is being young and discovering new worlds in the machine, but the particularity of the amber terminal resonates more strongly than I realised until I felt myself bristle at that curt dismissal.

kristopolous 4y ago
I wonder if there'd be a market for amber LCD panels these days - the aesthetics of the past with the manufacturing ease, durability and technology of the present. Heck maybe you can put it on-board as a color option in the OSD. (yes I know this is all possible with software like xrandr and redshift, thanks - having it done on the display side might give different results)
- somat 4y ago
  I don't know if it needs to be amber, I mean I like amber, I set my terminal emulators to use a amber on black color scheme, but I don't know if it is the best. But I would like a high resolution monochrome display, there is something about not having subpixels that I think would lead to a very sharp display, good for reading stuff on. see also: eink displays
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    We’re going to have to figure out how to connect one of those old gameboy lights to an eink display
- justsomehnguy 4y ago
  > market for amber LCD panels Somewhere about 15 units world-wide? Not a best opportunity.. > having it done on the display side might give different results If you take an OLED panel with a good pre/post-processor for the text mode you can get a pretty good results, but who needs a real text mode nowadays? But yeah, I have at least two ancient Android tablets and at least one with Windows, I would love to repurpose at least one of them as an amber display to show the status of the services.
- anikom15 4y ago
  Current monitors can’t actually replicate the true color of amber phosphors (and the green ones). It falls outside the gamut of the monitor.
  - LoganDark 4y ago
    I think they meant a monochrome LCD with a nice amber backlight.
  - kuschku 4y ago
    Is that amber outside Rec709/sRGB, or outside Rec.2020? Because many modern monitors can display all of DCI-P3 and the vast majority of Rec.2020
    - anikom15 4y ago
      DCI-P3 (barely) covers amber (P3), but not the green one (P1). It does cover P2, which is also green and is a more gentle green. I think it was used more for oscilloscopes than monochrome monitors.
- 7speter 4y ago
  I kinda think the functionality has been replaced, maybe reduced to e-ink displays? The contrast, the adjacent simplicity and focus involved with having one job of simply displaying textual information? Now, amber e-ink displays, that would be really interesting to see :)
Nition 4y ago
Our local library had them for a while when I was young. The Windows PCs that eventually replaced them seemed worse - they seemed okay at doing a thousand different things instead of very good at doing one thing. The amber sceen PCs were hyper-focused on searching books. Looking back now, they were probably DEC VT320s as seen in this LGR video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuZUPpmXfT0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuZUPpmXfT0
- wkat4242 4y ago
  I think that focus and efficiency is why many people still enjoy TUI and CLI tools to this day.
- mat_epice 4y ago
  Wow, this brings back a memory that was quite heavily buried. Either in middle school or high school, we had some similar amber terminals for searching the card catalog. I appreciated at the time how much quicker it was to use those than the web-based system accessed via Windows 95 (?) desktops.
PostOnce 4y ago
If no-one missed amber monitors, this repo wouldn't have 18,000 stars: https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term QED :)
- adolph 4y ago
  Given a solid discovery mechanism the long tail can be surprisingly thick
- anileated 4y ago
  Apple’s accessibility tools bring us tantalisingly close to the amber monitor look. All we need is the already available grayscale filter, but with shades of amber rather than shades of grey. I’m sure there’s a low-level API that makes it possible…
  - newaccount74 4y ago
    I used to do something like that when I was developing b&w photos in my room. I changed the color balance somehow to block green and blue to have a red only display. This way I could use a timer app on the computer for developing photos. (I also had to turn the brightness of the monitor down pretty far, just the red software filter apparently wasn't enough)
anikom15 4y ago
I also have a nostalgia for monochrome monitors, so I figured out how to turn mine into one: https://youtu.be/oX-y7ilgDSQ https://youtu.be/oX-y7ilgDSQ
NikkiA 4y ago
When I was working on VAXen in the mid-90s, I always fought to ensure I got amber vts over the green options, to the point that for a brief while I had an amber vt240 that was total garbage (bad flyback that whined and gave me headaches every day) rather than a green vt102.

kristopolous 4y ago

I wonder if there'd be a market for amber LCD panels these days - the aesthetics of the past with the manufacturing ease, durability and technology of the present. Heck maybe you can put it on-board as a color option in the OSD. (yes I know this is all possible with software like xrandr and redshift, thanks - having it done on the display side might give different results)

somat 4y ago
I don't know if it needs to be amber, I mean I like amber, I set my terminal emulators to use a amber on black color scheme, but I don't know if it is the best. But I would like a high resolution monochrome display, there is something about not having subpixels that I think would lead to a very sharp display, good for reading stuff on. see also: eink displays
- bee_rider 4y ago
  We’re going to have to figure out how to connect one of those old gameboy lights to an eink display
justsomehnguy 4y ago
> market for amber LCD panels Somewhere about 15 units world-wide? Not a best opportunity.. > having it done on the display side might give different results If you take an OLED panel with a good pre/post-processor for the text mode you can get a pretty good results, but who needs a real text mode nowadays? But yeah, I have at least two ancient Android tablets and at least one with Windows, I would love to repurpose at least one of them as an amber display to show the status of the services.
anikom15 4y ago
Current monitors can’t actually replicate the true color of amber phosphors (and the green ones). It falls outside the gamut of the monitor.
- LoganDark 4y ago
  I think they meant a monochrome LCD with a nice amber backlight.
- kuschku 4y ago
  Is that amber outside Rec709/sRGB, or outside Rec.2020? Because many modern monitors can display all of DCI-P3 and the vast majority of Rec.2020
  - anikom15 4y ago
    DCI-P3 (barely) covers amber (P3), but not the green one (P1). It does cover P2, which is also green and is a more gentle green. I think it was used more for oscilloscopes than monochrome monitors.
7speter 4y ago
I kinda think the functionality has been replaced, maybe reduced to e-ink displays? The contrast, the adjacent simplicity and focus involved with having one job of simply displaying textual information? Now, amber e-ink displays, that would be really interesting to see :)

Nition 4y ago

Our local library had them for a while when I was young. The Windows PCs that eventually replaced them seemed worse - they seemed okay at doing a thousand different things instead of very good at doing one thing. The amber sceen PCs were hyper-focused on searching books. Looking back now, they were probably DEC VT320s as seen in this LGR video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuZUPpmXfT0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuZUPpmXfT0

wkat4242 4y ago
I think that focus and efficiency is why many people still enjoy TUI and CLI tools to this day.
mat_epice 4y ago
Wow, this brings back a memory that was quite heavily buried. Either in middle school or high school, we had some similar amber terminals for searching the card catalog. I appreciated at the time how much quicker it was to use those than the web-based system accessed via Windows 95 (?) desktops.

PostOnce 4y ago

If no-one missed amber monitors, this repo wouldn't have 18,000 stars: https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term QED :)

adolph 4y ago
Given a solid discovery mechanism the long tail can be surprisingly thick
anileated 4y ago
Apple’s accessibility tools bring us tantalisingly close to the amber monitor look. All we need is the already available grayscale filter, but with shades of amber rather than shades of grey. I’m sure there’s a low-level API that makes it possible…
- newaccount74 4y ago
  I used to do something like that when I was developing b&w photos in my room. I changed the color balance somehow to block green and blue to have a red only display. This way I could use a timer app on the computer for developing photos. (I also had to turn the brightness of the monitor down pretty far, just the red software filter apparently wasn't enough)

anikom15 4y ago

I also have a nostalgia for monochrome monitors, so I figured out how to turn mine into one: https://youtu.be/oX-y7ilgDSQ https://youtu.be/oX-y7ilgDSQ

NikkiA 4y ago

When I was working on VAXen in the mid-90s, I always fought to ensure I got amber vts over the green options, to the point that for a brief while I had an amber vt240 that was total garbage (bad flyback that whined and gave me headaches every day) rather than a green vt102.