VGA ROM Fonts (2020)
alexandrugroza.ro
VGA ROM Fonts (2020)
1–10 of 46 posts
Re: VGA ROM Fonts (2020)
#2Font loader TSRs... Blast from the past there. You don't have to have the font table resident in the "resident" kernel of the TSR, hook timer and 21h and use the timer to check if the VGA font table has been changed; when it has, raise a flag and next 21h hook can safely re-read that data from a file and cram it into video ram again.
Re: VGA ROM Fonts (2020)
#3We used to erase those eproms with sunlight. Took a lot longer, but seems a lot safer than that rig!
Re: VGA ROM Fonts (2020)
#4Font loader TSRs... Blast from the past there. You don't have to have the font table resident in the "resident" kernel of the TSR, hook timer and 21h and use the timer to check if the VGA font table has been changed; when it has, raise a flag and next 21h hook can safely re-read that data from a file and cram it into video ram again.
Do you recall "DOSBLOOD.EXE", a font loader TSR that made the letters look like they were dripping?
Re: VGA ROM Fonts (2020)
#5After 30+ years of XGA and higher I've forgotten what coding on an 80x25 terminal felt like. Cramped. The answer is "cramped".
Re: VGA ROM Fonts (2020)
#6We used to erase those eproms with sunlight. Took a lot longer, but seems a lot safer than that rig!
Yes, that rig looks too close to a Darwin award.
Re: VGA ROM Fonts (2020)
#7After 30+ years of XGA and higher I've forgotten what coding on an 80x25 terminal felt like. Cramped. The answer is "cramped".
It depends on the language. Modern languages feel like that because they evolved on high resolution workstation screens with GUIs that could use smaller fonts. You can do 132x50 on most SVGA cards, but you’ll want a bigger screen for that (and the fonts will be ugly 8x8 or 6x8 ones).
Writing BASIC on 80x25 feels constrained, but 80x35 is much better. Java would be a lot more concise if it was designed with VT-100s in mind.
Re: VGA ROM Fonts (2020)
#8We used to erase those eproms with sunlight. Took a lot longer, but seems a lot safer than that rig!
The irony is real erasers, sometimes even UL and OSHA approved, have cost less than ten eprom chips since the 80s, and have always cost a quarter to a tenth what an eprom programmer costs, so all the effort and danger is not saving very much.
Ten eproms seems like a lot to people born after the eprom era, but when every build and test cycle requires at least one (or maybe 2 for a 16 bit system, etc) then you can see why people tended to accumulate a hoard of eproms so they'd always have clean erased ready to use ones while actively programming, and erase was done in bulk either because the eraser held 16 chips at once or the erase process could be done in parallel with downtime (while watching TV or something).
Also in some cases during the transition era of UV to EEPROM hardware I remember some EEPROMs were pin for pin compatible with some EPROMs and nobody likes waiting for UV, EEPROMs are simply faster. Obviously not all EPROMs have an identical or faster EEPROM twin, but "many" do.
Re: VGA ROM Fonts (2020)
#9After 30+ years of XGA and higher I've forgotten what coding on an 80x25 terminal felt like. Cramped. The answer is "cramped".
It depends on the language. Modern languages feel like that because they evolved on high resolution workstation screens with GUIs that could use smaller fonts. You can do 132x50 on most SVGA cards, but you’ll want a bigger screen for that (and the fonts will be ugly 8x8 or 6x8 ones). Writing BASIC on 80x25 feels constrained, but 80x35 is much better. Java would be a lot more concise if it was designed with VT-100s in…
C# feels cramped unless you have huge desktop monitors.
Re: VGA ROM Fonts (2020)
#10We used to erase those eproms with sunlight. Took a lot longer, but seems a lot safer than that rig!
The UVC lamp setup seems dangerous as fuck - exposed live AC voltage AND mercury???
If you're in need of erasing EEPROMs, just do yourself a favor and buy 10mW UVC 265nm LED. A single LED should suffice to erase a single EEPROM chip within 10-15 minutes.