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Comment by js2 | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone here remember the graphical BBS client that ran on the Apple II? It ran in hires mode. Wikipedia indicates it might have been called PixelTerm. Whatever it was called, I seem to recall it was written in assembly, as I remember printing out the source listing on my Epson MX100 and spreading all 50+ sheets out on the floor to learn assembly. Ah the days, and sorry for the tangent. :-)

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On a related note, does anyone remember the graphical dos BBS client from the 90s called ripterm?

My first modem was 2400 baud so I'm a youngin' by some standards, but wow, seeing incremental graphic drawing was pretty cool back in the pre-AOL days. It was neater than progressive-jpeg because you'd watch the vector image get constructed on the fly: first the background outline, then a floodfill, then some more shapes, a few more flood fills, some detail lines, etc.

Before that I do remember using a modem in 3rd grade (circa 1988) and reading ascii-art emails from my principal. It was a green monochrome display so it was probably either ASCIIExpress or ProTerm, but I'm just guessing based on context.

I remember RIPscrip not getting much love on the BBS scene while ANSI got more and more elaborate; like a very juvenile microcosm of the war between bitmap and vector graphics.

It might be because while RIP graphics were technically superior, they were just another lo fi graphics medium. PCs had better graphics in games etc, while ANSI art has an enduring oldschool quality about it. Also it degrades gracefully to monochrome ASCII. :-)

High-end ANSI art did not degrade well, for what it's worth. Beyond that, towards the end of the trend, BBS banners were really only legible in TheDraw's high-res mode.

if you are a youngin' at 2400 baud, what does that make me with my parallel port 14,400 that was bigger than the laptop that I am typing this on?

RIP was quite widespread in NZ for some reason.

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