Show HN: ANSI-Saver – A macOS Screensaver | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: ANSI-Saver – A macOS Screensaver

github.com

104 pointslardissone39 comments

Hi, I've been working on something I've been thinking for long time but since I had no experience with macOS screen savers I always posponed. Now thanks to Claude I was able to create a screensaver that scroll ANSI files while your computer is idle.

It allow to use local ANS files or packs directly from 16colo.rs.

Repo: https://github.com/lardissone/ansi-saver

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You're inspiring me to attempt a rescue of my last BBS (MajorBBS system) from 1991-1993. It had some great ANSI room and section screens. It was run from a single 1GB(!!) drive that cost us $1000. We had email, a couple stores (one of the first online book stores) and store-n-forward mail systems, maybe finger and telnet(?). Unfortunately, a neighbor got stoned, had a cigarette in bed and burned up his house and ours. Nobody hurt, but the BBS wasn't backed up offsite.

Beautiful! No backups at all of something? Sorry for your house burnt.

It was a weird time frame. My partner was living in the house, and I was moving to Seattle. The backup was pretty much inches from the system itself. Not the last time I learned that lesson. But, the original SCSI drive did survive, even if the machines and desk and couches, etc. were all ruined. With HTML coming along we didn't rebuild. It's still seems like such a huge loss not having entities like BBSs on the internet. Just like the loss of IRC and other basic systems / plumbing of the capital I Internet. Yeah, they needed upgrades, but that's what IETF, RFC, and scrappy hackers are for. <sigh> Loving on the ANSI!

There were telnet BBSes on the internet in the 1990s. I even used some in 2005. Haven't gone looking, but I'm sure if you look, you'll find one. (But it might be better to use ssh today.)

In the BBS days persistent storage was expensive. Backups were at best saving something to two different floppy disks. If you got lucky you could rebuild most stuff from files you had shared with friends.

This would be great with an option to draw each ANSI line by line with pixels drawn left to right. The same way it was experienced over dialup.

The options could be baud rates: 56k, 14.4, 2400

Sounds like a great idea.

As someone with a flying toasters tie, I can’t wait to try this.

On an aside, I’ve gotten After Dark to work on Windows 10 with some effort. Haven’t tried 11 yet.

Ah, yes, After Dark, with the "Lunatic Fringe" module, which was fun (and was a time sink ;-0). And what I would like to see again is the "Stained Glass" module which produced phantastic visual effects when tuned a bit.

This is really great work, I’m installing this immediately once I’m back on my machine

My terminal loads ANSI each time it opens, but requires downloading artpacks first: https://github.com/retlehs/ansimotd

I also like how your README suggests specific packs to grab

From great constraint springs great creativity. Brought back fond memories of the BBS scene in the 80s. Thanks to any USR people who may be reading this, my HST (with sysop discount) opened up a world to me.

Added a demo video and an explaining post on my own site: https://leandroardissone.com/posts/ansi-saver

Minor nit: I kept trying to tap the text to open the video before I realized I had to tap the image.

ah, good catch.

A couple of the art packs you recommend 404.

Fixed!

Thank you so much for building this. The larger demoscene art community needs something like this. Also, as someone suggested, maybe a starter default art pack would be awesome.

I thought about using a starter pack, but not sure which one, I'm open to suggestions!

btw, added a default pack in the newest version.

Such a great idea!

Added a modem emulation mode:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwgoDvFB8Ak

This is absolutely brilliant. I've been toying with the codebase and thought this would work really well similar to the 'Macintosh' style animated screensaver present in macOS's more recent updates.

https://youtu.be/gSss24I_y3M

Still a bit rough around the edges. I am currently adding per-character animation so the grid enters like a "wave"

Very cool... I ran a Telegard BBS back when I was a kid, definitely brings back great memories of all the cool ANSI art!

Those are some intense system requirements.

(unintentional) satire? almost a meditation on the seemingly inevitable bloat of software

Pretty much any Mac bought in the past 5 years can fulfil the requirements, which doesn't feel terribly unreasonable, and I bet the Intel case would be straightforward to cover too, and now you're catering for every Mac bought in the past 6 years.

Apple are dicks about making it easy to test on older macOS revisions, but I'm sure that'd actually be easier than you'd expect too. (I have a FOSS project that has macOS as a supported target. It targets OS X Mavericks, released in 2013. I don't have any easy way of testing anything older than macOS Ventura, released in 2022, and to be honest I don't really care to figure out how to do any better, but, last time somebody complained about OS X Mavericks incompatibility, and I fixed the problem, which was actually very easy to do: it did apparently work.) Put in a modicum of effort and I'm sure you can make this thing work for every Mac sold since like 2015, and there'd be a non-zero chance it'd work for some older ones too.

Thinking back to when BBSs were a thing, since that'd be on topic: perhaps Americans got a lucky break with the Apple II, in production from 1977-1993 (says Wikipedia) and seemingly a viable commercial platform for a measurable fraction of the period? For me, growing up in the UK in the late 20th century, the whole computer ecosystem seemed to get pretty much completely refreshed about every 10 years at the very most. Buy a BBC Micro in 1983: platform dead by 1990. Buy a ZX Spectrum in 1983: platform dead by 1991. Buy an Atari ST in 1985: platform dead by 1992. Buy an Amiga in 1986: platform dead by 1994. The PC was a bit of an exception, as the OS remained the same (for good or for ill...) for longer, but the onward march of hardware progress meant that you'd need new hardware every few years if you wanted to actually run recent software.

Anyway, my basic thinking is that if in March 2026 you are releasing some software that requires you to have a computer manufactured at some point in the 2020s, then this is hardly without historical precedent. It might even simply be the natural order of things.

Me? I set the displays to go to sleep after N minutes.

Ah, yes, I’m not able to test in Intel Macs. Will try to make it available to lower macOS versions at least.

You might find some volunteers here willing to make Intel builds :)

it's open source, anyone can help with it, I'm happy to merge PRs

Just added support to macOS Sequoia.

It's able to download packs but you have to disable Lulu when you first run the screen saver itself because Lulu doesn't seem to detect its network access (and can't allow you to approve it)

It seems to also download the HTML for the 16colors page, and will occasionally display it.

Nice work! The ANSI art scene was such a unique corner of computing history. Would love to see a "slow scroll" mode that simulates the modem experience — watching art render line by line over a 14.4k connection was half the magic.

Added in v0.4.0 :) (edited version #)

This is brilliant - thanks!

There are so many packs on that site to choose from, it would be great to get some pointers on which ones to install.

Anyone else having trouble getting this to work?

I tried building myself, and the build ended with a certificate error. (I get it, distributing software always hits unexpected snags.)

Then I installed from zip and when I use preview (in the screen saver options,) I just get a blank screen. There's a message at the top of the screen, but most of it is truncated from the notch from the camera.

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Edit: I tried adding sources, but they don't seem to download. Not sure why. Sigh.

Doesn't work for me either. I'm running Sequoia on an Intel Mac. When the saver runs, it says "No art sources configured. Open Screen Saver Options to add pack URLs or a local folder." I've added all 5 of the recommended pack URLs listed on the GitHub page, and even tried clicking the Refetch Packs button, but it won't show anything except that message.

Tahoe only? Yikes!

I just pushed a new version with support to macOS Sequoia.

Thank you! For those of us that are reluctant to upgrade to Tahoe, I thank you!

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