Hoard-of-bitfonts: bitmap fonts from disused operating systems
1–10 of 41 posts
Re: Hoard-of-bitfonts: bitmap fonts from disused operating systems
#2Nice catalog. I also prefer bitmap fonts for terminals on low DPI and even 32" 4K monitors. The OLDSCHOOL PC FONT RESOURCE is a treasure trove.
Re: Hoard-of-bitfonts: bitmap fonts from disused operating systems
#3I still have my original Interact computer which is not listed. The text on that is 5x5 pixel characters with 1 pixel in between, so 6x6 but the gap is not encoded in the font. Only upper case characters were supported. The font is not in a separate prom, it's in the main 2K eprom along with the tape read/write functions and some very simple keyboard scanning and pixel, box, and text rendering functions. I think a ROM dump exists somewhere online, so with the above description someone should be able to locate the character set easily enough. Probably the worst one you'll ever see.
Re: Hoard-of-bitfonts: bitmap fonts from disused operating systems
#4My first thought on looking at a few fonts was why bother, but as I started to go through more of them, there are some really nice ideas there.
Re: Hoard-of-bitfonts: bitmap fonts from disused operating systems
#5I still have my original Interact computer which is not listed. The text on that is 5x5 pixel characters with 1 pixel in between, so 6x6 but the gap is not encoded in the font. Only upper case characters were supported. The font is not in a separate prom, it's in the main 2K eprom along with the tape read/write functions and some very simple keyboard scanning and pixel, box, and text rendering functions. I think a RO…
I think the DEC VT05 font is similar, but I can't even find any good closeup pictures of the screen (just ones that show the whole unit, but don't really show the detail of the screen).
Re: Hoard-of-bitfonts: bitmap fonts from disused operating systems
#6Huh. Apparently the default Amiga Topaz font was redesigned for Kickstart ROM 2.0 without changing the name of the font. Compared to the old version, the new Topaz font does look rather generic.
Re: Hoard-of-bitfonts: bitmap fonts from disused operating systems
#7I still have my original Interact computer which is not listed. The text on that is 5x5 pixel characters with 1 pixel in between, so 6x6 but the gap is not encoded in the font. Only upper case characters were supported. The font is not in a separate prom, it's in the main 2K eprom along with the tape read/write functions and some very simple keyboard scanning and pixel, box, and text rendering functions. I think a RO…
Looking at the screen shots in https://www.old-computers.com/museum/software_detail.asp?st=..., it doesn’t look bad.
Of course, those are lying. https://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=100... says “The Interact shipped with 2 joysticks, a built-in tape recorder, a TV RF modulator and 2 KB of ROM”.
So, in real life, those characters were filtered through a NTSC tv signal.
Also, the last comment on https://www.old-computers.com/museum/doc.asp?c=1004 claims “It had no character generator, formin it's large letters from graphic routines.” That seems to imply all characters were drawn procedurally, not from a bitmap font. I find that unlikely. Can that be done in less memory than a generic blitter would use?
There even is a link to emulators on https://www.old-computers.com/museum/emulator.asp?c=1004&st=.... One of them led me to http://dchector.free.fr/link.html, which has a few emulators for (AFAIK) obscure systems such as “Thomson MO5NR, Thomson MO6 & Olivetti Prodest PC128” and http://dchector.free.fr/download/interact_rom.zip, which, presumably, is the ROM for this system.
Re: Hoard-of-bitfonts: bitmap fonts from disused operating systems
#8A similar project is the Retro Computing fonts from KreativeKorp[1].
Re: Hoard-of-bitfonts: bitmap fonts from disused operating systems
#9I still have my original Interact computer which is not listed. The text on that is 5x5 pixel characters with 1 pixel in between, so 6x6 but the gap is not encoded in the font. Only upper case characters were supported. The font is not in a separate prom, it's in the main 2K eprom along with the tape read/write functions and some very simple keyboard scanning and pixel, box, and text rendering functions. I think a RO…
Reminds me of the Fairchild Channel F font a bit
Re: Hoard-of-bitfonts: bitmap fonts from disused operating systems
#10I still have my original Interact computer which is not listed. The text on that is 5x5 pixel characters with 1 pixel in between, so 6x6 but the gap is not encoded in the font. Only upper case characters were supported. The font is not in a separate prom, it's in the main 2K eprom along with the tape read/write functions and some very simple keyboard scanning and pixel, box, and text rendering functions. I think a RO…
Looking at the screen shots in https://www.old-computers.com/museum/software_detail.asp?st=... , it doesn’t look bad. Of course, those are lying. https://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=100... says “The Interact shipped with 2 joysticks, a built-in tape recorder, a TV RF modulator and 2 KB of ROM”. So, in real life, those characters were filtered through a NTSC tv signal. Also, the last comment on ht…
It probably means the hardware had no dedicated text mode with a separate character ROM, but that the software would draw the bitmaps to the graphics screen itself.