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Cool-retro-term: A terminal emulator which mimics the old cathode display

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Re: Cool-retro-term: A terminal emulator which mimics the old cathode display

#51

Post by joezydeco »

digisign wrote: post #9
peatmoss wrote: post #6

In a modern world where we backlight semiconductors to produce high dpi screens, it almost feels weird to think we used to fire electron guns towards our eyes. I was always partial to the amber screen. Has anyone recently played with an old Asteroids cabinet? The screen is a black and white CRT. When you fire a missile, the screen effect is insanely bright. I'd forgotten just how intense that was. I can't wait until…

Asteroids was a vector game, interesting technology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroids_%28video_game%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_monitor

Jed Margolin (ex-Atari) has the definitive history of the Atari vector games and how the hardware works:

http://www.jmargolin.com/xy/xymon.htm

http://www.jmargolin.com/vgens/vgens.htm

Asteroids was a humble 6502 running at 1.5 MHz with a PROM-driven pseudo-CPU acting as the vector generator.

Re: Cool-retro-term: A terminal emulator which mimics the old cathode display

#52

Post by osxrand »

pervycreeper wrote: post #47
thomasfl wrote: post #43

Someone™ posted an issue last july that this exquisite piece of software retro art did not compile on OS X. After a while someone™ actually managed to compile it on OSX, and the original author is working on a port, but until then we have to make do with the Cathode app. Only problem with the Cathode app is that it flickers more and more till you get an epileptic fit if you don't upgrade to the paid version.

Well, on the Mac, you pay for stuff, that's just the way it is. If you care about gratis & libre software, start dogfooding a free OS.

That's complete recycled bovine waste my friend.

Just because I choose to use OS X does not mean I'm ignoring the bsd base its built on, nor not enjoying using / contributing to open projects.

Re: Cool-retro-term: A terminal emulator which mimics the old cathode display

#57

Post by jgeorge »

digisign wrote: post #9
peatmoss wrote: post #6

In a modern world where we backlight semiconductors to produce high dpi screens, it almost feels weird to think we used to fire electron guns towards our eyes. I was always partial to the amber screen. Has anyone recently played with an old Asteroids cabinet? The screen is a black and white CRT. When you fire a missile, the screen effect is insanely bright. I'd forgotten just how intense that was. I can't wait until…

Asteroids was a vector game, interesting technology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroids_%28video_game%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_monitor

Vector CRTs are all kinds of neat technology. I own a Tempest arcade cabinet, which is a color vector CRT, and it's such a huge difference from using regular raster CRTs.

Re: Cool-retro-term: A terminal emulator which mimics the old cathode display

#59

Post by raverbashing »

shiven wrote: post #44

In my X-ray crystallography/structural biology lab we still use CRTs from over a decade old Silicon Graphics systems. They are the only displays that can do a 120Hz horizontal scan, which is darn critical when you are looking at protein and drug structures in quad-buffered stereo! Sadly, the CRTs are dying off over time and it gets harder to find replacements that can work as well as they do. There are LCD alternativ…

Care to explain what the issue is? Delay? Blurriness?

Re: Cool-retro-term: A terminal emulator which mimics the old cathode display

#60

Post by ashmud »

peatmoss wrote: post #6

In a modern world where we backlight semiconductors to produce high dpi screens, it almost feels weird to think we used to fire electron guns towards our eyes. I was always partial to the amber screen. Has anyone recently played with an old Asteroids cabinet? The screen is a black and white CRT. When you fire a missile, the screen effect is insanely bright. I'd forgotten just how intense that was. I can't wait until…

My memory is a little fuzzy. I remember a game at the St. Louis arcade museum that was b/w vector and very bright when I went there about 20 years ago. It could have been Space Wars, though.
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