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Show HN: Original 8x16 ASCII Fixed Width Font: Classic Console Neue

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Re: Show HN: Original 8x16 ASCII Fixed Width Font: Classic Console Neue

#21

Post by anyfoo »

owl57 wrote: post #20
anyfoo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

720x350 for the pervasive 80x25 text mode actually (a resolution which wasn’t commonly used at that time for graphics modes otherwise). I’ve mentioned in another comment what I think may be missing for it to look right. And I’m not really being nitpicky I think. It really evokes rather little about what this era looked like with “just” the right pixels at the right place.

> 720x350 for the pervasive 80x25 text mode With 9x16 font, shouldn't it be 720x400?

Oops, you are right, it’s 720x400. I mixed it up with the MDA 9x14 80x25 text mode.

Re: Show HN: Original 8x16 ASCII Fixed Width Font: Classic Console Neue

#23

Post by fsckboy »

anyfoo wrote: post #15
fouc wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you adjust your resolution to compare? the 15" CRT was usually 800x600 or 1024x768 in those days.

720x350 for the pervasive 80x25 text mode actually (a resolution which wasn’t commonly used at that time for graphics modes otherwise). I’ve mentioned in another comment what I think may be missing for it to look right. And I’m not really being nitpicky I think. It really evokes rather little about what this era looked like with “just” the right pixels at the right place.

are you referring to the IBM PC monochrome console screen? or common terminals from that time?

Re: Show HN: Original 8x16 ASCII Fixed Width Font: Classic Console Neue

#24

Post by anyfoo »

fsckboy wrote: post #23
anyfoo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

720x350 for the pervasive 80x25 text mode actually (a resolution which wasn’t commonly used at that time for graphics modes otherwise). I’ve mentioned in another comment what I think may be missing for it to look right. And I’m not really being nitpicky I think. It really evokes rather little about what this era looked like with “just” the right pixels at the right place.

are you referring to the IBM PC monochrome console screen? or common terminals from that time?

No, just normal VGA (and SVGA, and beyond that) monitors, up to before the first flat screens appeared.

But I made a small mistake, as another commenter pointed out: VGA text mode resolution was 720x400, not 720x350.

Re: Show HN: Original 8x16 ASCII Fixed Width Font: Classic Console Neue

#25

Post by matvore »

anyfoo wrote: post #6

They never look right. It's not just the fact that it should be 9x16 instead of 8x16, or that sometimes (often?) the aspect ratio is off, it's something fundamental about how that 9x16 VGA font was rendered on CRTs. A really good CRT emulation on a really good flatscreen monitor can maybe simulate the VGA text mode experience of the day, but so far I haven't really seen it.

IMO it still looks rather nostalgic. I do remember using cmd.exe or command.exe in Windows 95 and later and this being the default (but it would different if you had a different legacy code page set, IIRC). Of course cmd.exe just rendered the pixels as-is, no emulation or retro effects.

Re: Show HN: Original 8x16 ASCII Fixed Width Font: Classic Console Neue

#29

Post by pezezin »

anyfoo wrote: post #14
jareklupinski wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is it because monitors of the time were all slightly 'bent' outwards? nothing was a perfect square https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term

I think it's much more than that. It's also scanlines, and more generally how a pixel looks when it's represented by electrons hitting the phosphor through a shadow mask. Even when a shadow mask is made up of holes, not slits (Trinitron), those holes do not correspond to pixels. This, the particular characteristics of the phosphor, and the fact that the phosphor is behind glass, probably all add up to a very certain…

I don't know about older hardware because I started in the early '90s, but the VGA didn't have scanlines the way game consoles played on TVs had. The VGA had a built-in line doubler, and the minimum horizontal scan rate was 31 kHz. In fact, very few computer monitors at that time supported 15 kHz.
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