53
votes
What was the original unix font?
Sorry to disapoint you, there is no 'unix' font.
Unix was developed on mini computers using terminals, which could be CRT based or printing terminals (teletype). In either case the 'font' used was ...
- 213k
50
votes
How was the @ sign added to keyboards and character sets?
The @ symbol was present on typewriters a long time before computers were invented, see for example this 1889 Hammond typewriter. In English-writing countries, the symbol was already used in ...
- 118k
48
votes
Accepted
Which font with slashed zero is being used in this screengrab?
The font in use appears to be the ‘9×14’ bitmap font (i.e. 8×14 glyph bitmaps tweaked for 9×14 character cells) of the Hercules graphics card. The title of the video is ‘Windows1 (1985) PC XT ...
- 21.6k
39
votes
Accepted
What mid-1970s to mid-1980s home computers had their graphics characters added to Unicode 13?
The new additions mentioned are mostly to be found in the new Symbols for Legacy Computing block (PDF link) covering the 1FB00–1FBFF codepoint range. This block includes:
a large number of BLOCK ...
- 2,927
37
votes
Are there vintage or historical bitmapped fonts available for non-commercial use?
Try THE OLDSCHOOL PC FONT RESOURCE
Looks positively awesome to me. I started by looking for IBM MDA - the classic 9x14 font, and I found this site.
License is Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike ...
30
votes
Are there vintage or historical bitmapped fonts available for non-commercial use?
-misc-fixed-* X11 font "family" matches all your criteria - it originated sometime in the 1980s, thus it can be considered retro or vintage, is distributed public domain, comes in several sizes (5x7 ...
- 4,953
30
votes
Accepted
Why did the original Apple //e have two sets of inverse video characters?
Why did the original Apple //e have two sets of inverse uppercase characters?
Simple: To allow lower case inverse letters.
It's all about the clever way Woz arranged the original II's single ...
- 213k
28
votes
Accepted
Proportional fonts on 8-bit computers
Digital Research produced as one of their early attempts into graphical desktops (on their way to GEM) a basic portable graphics library - GSX. GSX did actually support proportional fonts, both in ...
- 33k
21
votes
How do 80x25 characters (each with dimension 9x16 pixels) fit on a VGA display of resolution 640x480?
CRTs don’t have a fixed pixel resolution; early CRTs have fixed timings (25.175 MHz and 28.322 MHz for VGA). VGA 80×25 text mode really does produce 400 lines of 720 pixels, as you determined, with a ...
- 118k
21
votes
Accepted
How do 80x25 characters (each with dimension 9x16 pixels) fit on a VGA display of resolution 640x480?
How does VGA manage to show 720x400 resolution text on a 640x480 display?
This might be your basic misunderstanding here. Displays as used back then and what VGA was designed for, are not a fixed ...
- 213k
19
votes
Are there vintage or historical bitmapped fonts available for non-commercial use?
Are there vintage or historical bitmapped fonts available for non-commercial use?
I'm looking for a source for one or a few 1-bit black-or-white
bitmapped fonts used in the past, available in a ...
- 12.2k
19
votes
What was the original unix font?
My first (1983) exposure to Unix was via teletypes and CRT terminals (VT52, ADM3a) so the fonts were generated by the terminal devices and nothing to do with the OS itself. Troff was used but only ...
- 1,315
18
votes
What was the original unix font?
Obviously something like this ASR-33 lookalike font as seen here (image is from the Wikipedia article "History of Unix".
Title: Ken Thompson (sitting) and Dennis Ritchie at PDP-11
...
- 6,119
18
votes
How was the @ sign added to keyboards and character sets?
The AT-symbol is a US development in use at least since the early 1800s, denoting single unit prices in commercial texts (*1). It was as much used, that early typewriters of the 1880s added it as ...
- 213k
17
votes
Proportional fonts on 8-bit computers
Just the first (of many) example of using proportional fonts on Commodore64: https://youtu.be/k2NRlsopoOU?t=441
You couldn't really use a proportional font on the Spectrum because
the colour ...
- 10.2k
15
votes
Are there vintage or historical bitmapped fonts available for non-commercial use?
Damien Guard's series of articles starting with Typography in 8 bits: System fonts has versions of almost all of the old system fonts you might remember.
If you don't mind digging about in ROM images,...
- 20.6k
14
votes
Proportional fonts on 8-bit computers
Back in 1986, a company called Berkeley Softworks released a GUI desktop environment called GEOS for the Commodore 64. It was later ported to the Commodore 128, the Commodore Plus/4, and Apple II.
...
- 2,012
14
votes
What dot matrix printer? - UK, 1987
The printer looks quite like a C.T.I. CP-80 variant. The silver oval is a give away. See this picture of a CP-80 Model II I have pulled out a few weeks ago for a PC-XT setup to help with GlaBIOS.
(...
- 213k
14
votes
Which font with slashed zero is being used in this screengrab?
According to the video's description the used graphics card is a Hercules Graphics Card. This type is as well what gets selected during installation at 2:36. Since the very same font is clearly ...
- 213k
14
votes
Accepted
What's the correct Unicode code point for the Apple IIe's "delete" symbol?
TL;DR:
There is no 'REVERSE FIVE-BY-FIVE CENTERED CHECKER BOARD' (*1) in all of Unicode's blocks. Closest by looks and positioning might be the
"REVERSE FOUR-BY-FOUR CHECKER BOARD" U+1FBA6
...
- 213k
12
votes
Accepted
How did the Microprofessor II have space for a Chinese font in the ROM?
Check out this page https://classictech.wordpress.com/computer-companies/acer-groupmultitech-electronics-inc-sunnyvale-calif/
Esp. the PDF at the end of the article, dated September 14th 1982: https:/...
- 236
11
votes
Proportional fonts on 8-bit computers
The games Skool Daze and Back To Skool used proportional fonts for text on the ZX Spectrum.
(source: worldofspectrum.org)
11
votes
Proportional fonts on 8-bit computers
No 8-bit computer (back then) supported proportional fonts out of the box, but there where some programs on almost every bitmap-capable 8 bit computer. I this would include the Spectrum.
For the Apple ...
- 213k
10
votes
How to convert .ttf to .fnt for use with M10_SCR.COM DOS font driver
This is Morozov’s screen driver, available e.g. from SimtelNet archives. It uses a fairly typical font format for EGA/VGA fonts, namely a dump of the in-memory font data as loaded for the character ...
- 118k
10
votes
Accepted
Does the old bitmapped version of the Tahoma font exist anywhere?
I don't think Tahoma ever was distributed as a bitmap font. The idea that it was likely came from this interview with Matthew Carter, Georgia & Verdana - typefaces for the screen - www.will-harris....
- 20.6k
9
votes
Accepted
What happened to IntelliFont (i.e. Amiga vector fonts)?
The need for IntelliFont (FAIS) format fonts kind of fizzled out, and Agfa concentrated on its industrial printing side from the late 1990s. Initially, Adobe wouldn't give a licence or open up their ...
- 20.6k
9
votes
What dot matrix printer? - UK, 1987
A useful place to start with the matrix dimensions is this diagram from the Epson LX-810 LX-850 Service Manual:
Each pin is 0.29 mm diameter, and pins are spaced 0.35 mm apart vertically. ...
- 20.6k
9
votes
Which font with slashed zero is being used in this screengrab?
We can see that the zeros are slashed, so it is probably not one of the 9x16 fonts which used to have dotted zeros.
Actually, that is the key clue. Dotted vs. slashed zeros were never specific to ...
9
votes
What's the correct Unicode code point for the Apple IIe's "delete" symbol?
Only because @trikly asked (in this comment), from the relevant Unicode documentation(PDF), the three new "Specific symbols for delete" that have been accepted for future inclusion in the ...
- 331
8
votes
Accepted
Where did the standard arcade font originate?
It's a bold 8x8 pixel sans font.
Hard- and software wise using an 8x8 font is the most simple way to go and to create emphasis making it bold needs the least effort. Within an 8x8 grid, there aren't ...
- 213k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible