After 30+ years of XGA and higher I've forgotten what coding on an 80x25 terminal felt like. Cramped. The answer is "cramped".
80x43 seemed world-changing to me on a 286 with a 14" monitor. 80x50 was a bit squished.
VGA ROM Fonts (2020)
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Re: VGA ROM Fonts (2020)
#12After 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…
Ya...bog standard VGA can do 80x50; VESA SVGA can do 132x50 (or more, I think). I seemed to remember 8514/XGA had something like a 132x50 mode with decently readable fonts (8x16?), but I can't find a reference. 132x50 + tmux/screen is pretty usable.
You could also plug in a Hercules mono card and get a 2-monitor setup, if you had software that could grok it. The color and mono video memory lived in different, non-overlapping memory regions. Couple of shops (Xerox. Amdek? Moniterm?) had 1280x800 monochrome setups that could be a second monitor like this. Those were pretty sweet.
Re: VGA ROM Fonts (2020)
#13After 30+ years of XGA and higher I've forgotten what coding on an 80x25 terminal felt like. Cramped. The answer is "cramped".
132 column mode was pretty common on old terminals, and not too terrible if you had a 12+ inch CRT. Typically, still 24 rows though.
Re: VGA ROM Fonts (2020)
#14We 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.
Most popular UV EPROMS have an electrically eraseable EEPROM equivalent, so you can usually avoid it altogether. In the case of the 27C256 in the article, a 29C256 would be a pin compatible drop-in.
Re: VGA ROM Fonts (2020)
#15On that website, why don't the text word wrap when I zoom in?
Re: VGA ROM Fonts (2020)
#16On that website, why don't the text word wrap when I zoom in?
Because the css is forcing display:table, display:table row, and display:table cell on some divs and a fixed 1024px width. Remove all that and it zooms in/out fine. No idea why it's styled that way.
Re: VGA ROM Fonts (2020)
#17Re: VGA ROM Fonts (2020)
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Luckily, that’s changing. C# 10 is converting namespace blocks into directives like Java. That means one fewer indent.
Re: VGA ROM Fonts (2020)
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
132 column mode was pretty common on old terminals, and not too terrible if you had a 12+ inch CRT. Typically, still 24 rows though.
Not on PC though.
It was available, but quirky and sometimes app specific. I do remember running Wordstar in 132 columns and some TSR to have DOS in 132 columns. There was "MODE CON COLS=132 LINES=50" also.
Re: VGA ROM Fonts (2020)
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
132 column mode was pretty common on old terminals, and not too terrible if you had a 12+ inch CRT. Typically, still 24 rows though.
Not on PC though.
SVGATextMode could make these available, depending on your video card. With modern kernels, the text mode can be set on boot.