Hoard-of-bitfonts: bitmap fonts from disused operating systems | Hacker News Reader

Hoard-of-bitfonts: bitmap fonts from disused operating systems

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202 pointslnyan39 comments

I 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.

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).

Did you ever use a real VT05?

I love serial terminals and I love the design of the VT05 (even though I know it's wayy too deep for a modern desk). It's just so cool and futuristic in a 70s star trek kind of way.

I also heard it wasn't simply a small microcomputer, it had everything in discrete logic on many PCBs which seems to be why it was so big. Really cool. I'd love to see one some day.

I volunteered at a computer museum that had a lot of DEC stuff but we had nothing older in terms of DEC terminal sthan VT100s. I still own an amber VT520 (though from the Boundless era after the terminal business was sold by DEC)

Nope, never used a real one. Yeah, from what I was reading it didn't have a single-chip CPU - but that's to be expected as the VT05 was introduced in 1970 and Intel didn't release first single-chip CPU 4004 until 1971.

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.

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.

The term "character generator" in video specifically refers to hardware that overlays text onto the video signal. That is, in this case it's not a "text mode", it's a bitmap graphics mode used for text, which appears likely just going by the screenshots. There weren't many computer systems taking this approach in 1978, since any bitmap mode would be RAM-hungry, so they were usually either text centric(Commodore PET) or had both text and graphics modes and hybrids(Apple II, Atari).

We disassembled the 2k rom back then. There are routines for drawing text, character by character, pixel by pixel. The code is terribly not-optimized but fits in 2k including the character set. Hardware just has a single frame buffer at a fixed address. 4 pixels per byte, 32 bytes per line, and that includes over scan and horizontal blanking so 112 to 114 pixels wide 3 scan lines tall. Doubling the pixel clock, devoting more ram to it, and using the empty rom socket would have made it quite a machine for back then.

Reminds me of the Fairchild Channel F font a bit

I'm tempted to write something to help convert these for using in various U8g2/GFX libraries for micro-controllers. (I like building LED matrix/screens.)

It seems monobit only supports reading C/C++ fonts.

You may find this useful/inspirational.

https://github.com/ropg/truetype2gfx

I've been using it for my Watchy (an esp32 that uses Adafruit GFX).

It should include the 3x5 pixel font from Mike Koss's "The Terminal" on the Apple ][.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18142258

>DonHopkins on Oct 4, 2018 | parent | favorite | on: Sans Forgetica, a font designed to help you rememb...

Who can possibly forget the font that Mike Koss's "The Terminal" Apple ][ terminal emulator used to get 32 lines of 70 characters each in HIRES graphics mode in 1981? It's the most difficult to read font I've ever used regularly! (Don't try using it on a color TV, though.)

https://web.archive.org/web/20120206091422/http://mckoss.com...

>Tiny (3x5) Font

>In 1981 I wrote a terminal emulator for the Apple II. At the time, the Apple II could only display upper case characters. I used the hi-res display (280 x 192 pixels!) to display my own character set. In order to come close to showing an 80-column display, I created a truly tiny font, displaying the full ASCII character set (upper and lower case).

>I created a font within a 3x5 pixel dimension, allowing the display of 32 lines of 70 characters each. The font definitely takes some training and getting used to (especially recognition of characters that use descenders); but I found it to be quite readable after a while.

Might also be of interest:

https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/

Nice 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.

Ditto!! I’m hooked on the 8x8 high-fantasy font EagleSpCGA Alt3 from the Ultimate PC Font Pack. I use it everywhere.

Well, almost everywhere. The square font tends to break certain application layouts. So those get an 8x14 IBM VGA font.

I'm curious if anyone knows of a good way to visually compare fonts with each other?

Specifically, is there a good way to generate font sizing, character spacing, line spacing for both sets of fonts such that they're visually as close as possible?

https://meowni.ca/font-style-matcher/

These fonts are super fun to browse through! I have had an eink display and Arduino setup for about a year and finding a fun bitmap font to use was a big headache.

Espy_Sans_10.yaff from the old Apple Mac looks great!

My 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.

I'd love to see old video game fonts here. Pokemon, Zelda, etc. Though I'm sure there would be rights issues.

I think if they are bitmap fonts, they are uncopyrightable? At least in the USA.

Even a giant font where every character is a fax page of one of Apple's secret stolen design documents?

That’s not how the law works, it’s not like you’re sending invalid input to hack a program.

For a judge the design of a character is not protected by IP law. Some font formats are because they are like a program. But a bitmap of a character is not. And a fax page of whatever is not a bitmap of a character.

Wow, it even has Robotron PC 1715 in it, perhaps the first machine I laid my hands on. That's some dedication.

A similar project is the Retro Computing fonts from KreativeKorp[1].

[1] http://www.kreativekorp.com/software/fonts/index.shtml

How do you dare to call these operating systems and computers “disused”?!

Except Mac OS 7-9 (media production because a patched Mac OS 9 under a G4 is beast) and DOS (expensive ad-hoc industrial hardware), most computer/OSes aren't used to anything but retrogaming/retroemulation except with some niches with the Atari STE/FreeMint communities.

So somewhere out there there are people sticking to Mac OS 9? Or earlier? That's rad

Yes because the input latency on os9 under a G4 it's almost inexistent. There are unnoficial patches for media production:

http://macos9lives.com/

http://macos9lives.com/mac%20os%209%20lives_005.htm

I am more like a Void/OpenBSD guy with Unix and CLI tools, but people keeping old machines being useful it's always good.

Unix is wonderfully useful. I can run my applications on the Linux server in the shed and have the GUI on my laptop using X. I can do the same from a G3 iMac or an IBM RS/6000.

Well… in my house the only use the Windows box gets is gaming and I wouldn’t call it “disused”. It’s a horrible kludge, but not “disused”.

By far the most fun computer in the house is the C64 Maxi Commodore recreation. Endless hours of fun.

Huh. 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.

Topaz 1.x is basically a slightly modified IBM BIOS font. Topaz 2.x may look more generic but it’s not so blatantly a copy of any other such font that I’m aware of. Sort of like how the Atari 8-bit and Commodore 64 have identical lowercase characters.

Need Xerox 9700 laser printer fonts (ca. 1979). 300 DPI fonts, one font file per point size. "Font" files could also store logos. Max 512 x 128 pixels per character.

somewhere I have the bitmaps for Zenith/Heathkit Z100 series system fonts. I guess I should dig them up

Are there images of what the fonts actually look like? I couldn't find them.

It’s linked at the bottom of the project readme, but the dropdown menu makes them difficult to browse.

Thanks. Didn't spot it on a scan-read.

What is the legal status of using such a fonts?

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