
The Unix PC 3B1 system font, for modern computers - rbanffy
https://github.com/brandon-rhodes/unixpc-font-bdf
======
octetta
This warms my crusty heart. The first Unix machine I ever used was a 3B1.
Great keyboard! IIRC, it only had a 10 megabyte drive, yet managed to have a
pretty complete development and text-processing environment (i.e. cc/etc and
troff/etc). I really wanted to use GCC on it, but was never able to get enough
of the code on the machine at the same time to get it compiled there.

~~~
imglorp
[https://loomcom.com/3b2/emulator.html](https://loomcom.com/3b2/emulator.html)

~~~
merlyn
FWIW: A 3b1 (a tiny 68010 based Unix PC) is very different than a 3b2 (custom
WE32000 processor Unix box).

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dmd
Masswerk has a great writeup[0] about how to render these fonts correct you
need to take into account phosphor decay times and dot stretching.

[0] [https://www.masswerk.at/nowgobang/2019/dec-crt-
typography](https://www.masswerk.at/nowgobang/2019/dec-crt-typography)

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hinkley
I am reminded that green-screen text causes eye strain, especially with modern
brightness levels, and the slightly electric green vs the old phosphor green.

I spent many, many hours in the computer lab with someone who used white text
on a blue background, and adopted light grey on blue for myself. A color
scheme that some word processors also adopted.

Neither of us, nor Corel nor Microsoft, succeeded in converting the world to
white on blue. I have bigger fish to fry now, but try it out sometime when
you're tired of staring at the screen.

~~~
slacka
> green-screen text causes eye strain,

You have any data to back that up? My favorite color scheme is green-on-black,
followed by white-on-green. I find white and blue backgrounds the worst for
eye strain. Low brightness with high contrast seems to be another important
factor to reduce strain.

~~~
hinkley
What do you suppose would motivate someone who just looked at an image to
start talking about eye strain? Maybe the pain behind their eyes started them
thinking about the last time they had this problem?

Actual green screen phosphors are much lower saturation (and brightness) than
the green on black image on that github page. That particular green would be
more at home on a Hemp Festival advertisement. It's - to me - an interesting
example of how terminal emulators are definitely emulators.

This would be pretty close to what a brand new 'green screen' might look like,
and older ones would be faded:
[https://cf.ydcdn.net/latest/images/computer/_OPAL1.GIF](https://cf.ydcdn.net/latest/images/computer/_OPAL1.GIF)

A reasonable overview of saturated colors:
[https://uxmovement.com/content/why-you-should-avoid-
bright-s...](https://uxmovement.com/content/why-you-should-avoid-bright-
saturated-background-colors/)

Pure white on a bright (saturated) blue background is probably the worst color
pairing you can get. I agree. But I'm not talking about saturated blue, or
pure white. I'm talking about light (pale, if you like that word better) blue
and off-white (in the ballpark of "easier on the eyes", but that's not quite
right).

This is Wordperfect's blue, which is a bit darker than we used (probably
closer to YAST2's color scheme):

[https://discourse-cloud-file-uploads.s3.dualstack.us-
west-2....](https://discourse-cloud-file-uploads.s3.dualstack.us-
west-2.amazonaws.com/boingboing/original/3X/6/f/6f9f09bdba548af220df7f3761d845174ddaca0d.gif)

~~~
csnover
FYI, that UX Movement article misrepresents the few studies that it actually
cites and offers no evidence for its claim regarding saturation causing eye
strain. I know this because someone complained at me recently about a design,
linked to that article, and I actually bothered to read the couple of studies
it _did_ cite.

Where the UX Movement article says “saturation and brightness have a more
significant impact [than hue on arousal]”, one of the studies it cites clearly
states that brightness had _no_ impact on arousal. This obvious mistake calls
into doubt (for me, at least) whether the author has _any_ objective basis for
their claims.

On the other hand, this study which actually looks at colour preferences of
people experiencing eye strain [0] appears to show (Figure 1) that people
experiencing eye strain don’t select away from green, which seems to refute
fairly strongly your claim that green text causes eye strain for everybody.
This study references several other studies on the effects of colour overlays
so it is probably a good resource for additional research.

[0] [https://insights.ovid.com/optometry-vision-
science/opvis/201...](https://insights.ovid.com/optometry-vision-
science/opvis/2012/07/000/chromatic-aberration-accommodation-
color/16/00006324)

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pbnjay
This is awesome. I have a version of an old 8x8 IBM font compiled into a pixel
font renderer package I built for Go:
[https://github.com/pbnjay/pixfont](https://github.com/pbnjay/pixfont)

This would be a fun addition, I had started a BDF parser I need to finish...

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reaperducer
Does anyone know if this is the same font that was used in the AT&T 3B2? My
memory of that era can be a little... cloudy.

~~~
merlyn
The 3b2 didn't have a built-in screen. You'd typically use a serial terminal
with them, of which there were a near infinite many to choose from in the era.

One combination that was popular would be to pair up a DMD-5620 bitblit serial
terminal with the 3B2.

There's already an emulator for the DMD-5620, written by the same guy that has
written an emulator for the WE2000/3b2 setup.

[https://loomcom.com/3b2/dmd5620_emulator.html](https://loomcom.com/3b2/dmd5620_emulator.html)

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api
Would be nice if someone converted this to TTF.

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1MachineElf
Looks like Monoid

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flippyhead
Such nostalgia!

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ngcc_hk
Steve job spent quite a bit on font and Apple did. It made a difference.

