
The Oldschool PC Font Pack v2.0 - sep
https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/readme/
======
Exmoor
Unrelated to the fonts, but I _really_ love that CSS they're using to emulate
the ANSI interfaces of my youth. Perhaps it's just a product of my age, but I
find it a lot more usable then a lot of similar website interfaces.

~~~
airstrike
It's so incredibly easy to parse visually. I'm in heaven. The lime-green
background for selected text adds a special touch!

I wish there was a CSS framework for this type of UI language

~~~
tass
There is bootstra.386 which put a smile on my face:
[https://kristopolous.github.io/BOOTSTRA.386/](https://kristopolous.github.io/BOOTSTRA.386/)

------
bloopernova
This led me on a short Google trip to find the Sun Openboot font:

Finding this: [https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/307356/what-is-
the-...](https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/307356/what-is-the-
identification-of-the-font-being-used-for-the-solaris-console-in-tex)

And this is the TTF of that font:
[https://github.com/Zygo/xscreensaver/blob/master/OSX/gallant...](https://github.com/Zygo/xscreensaver/blob/master/OSX/gallant12x22.ttf)

~~~
cerberusss
Around 2000, I worked at Lucent, which was a Sun shop. But I can't remember
this font. Was it only used on the console, i.e. in text mode?

~~~
mceachen
If you booted single-user or didn't have a graphical login manager, you'd see
this on the console on SunOS 4 and earlier (80s and 90s, pre-Solaris). I think
by the time Solaris (or even open look) rolled around, it had a graphical user
login.

~~~
brirec
Solaris 2.6 and 7 didn’t have a graphical boot splash, so you’d see this while
watching a SPARC box boot up.

~~~
cellularmitosis
Just recently found an adafruit guide to building a solaris 2.6 setup using
QEMU. The nostalgia!

[https://learn.adafruit.com/build-your-own-sparc-with-qemu-
an...](https://learn.adafruit.com/build-your-own-sparc-with-qemu-and-solaris)

edit: just remembered that you sadly don't get to see Sun Gallant Demi in all
its glory, because it boots using the QEMU openfirmware.

------
sep
Link to the detailed font index: [https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-
fonts/fontlist/](https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/fontlist/)

------
dang
2020
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22001964](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22001964)

2018
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16098262](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16098262)

2017
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14695319](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14695319)

2016
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11021430](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11021430)

It's a fine thing to submit but the cutoff for dupes is about a year:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html).

Edit: scratch that, we'll make an exception since it's the first new release
in several years. See discussion in subthread below.

~~~
sep
v2.0 of this was released just a few days ago, after several years without a
major version. Hence the submission.

Btw, thanks for doing the hard and important work of moderating hn! [Edit: I
realize now that the last part may come off as sarcastic, so I want to
emphasize it is sincere. While here I disagree with the action, I'm generally
very thankful for the moderators' work.]

~~~
dang
Ah, ok, I missed that. And now I understand why you submitted
[https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-
fonts/readme/#history](https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/readme/#history)
originally. But are the differences with v2 enough to support a substantively
different _discussion_? I would say probably not? This comes up whenever new
versions of projects are released - see
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23071428](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23071428)
for a longer explanation.

I'd be happy to make an exception if there's a case for the diff with v2.

~~~
sep
The original submission-title was more descriptive (something like: "The
Oldschool PC Font Pack v2.0 Released: 133 fonts added, new online index"), but
I assume a moderator edited it to the current, more concise, one.

Feature-wise, the new version offers about 3 times as many "oldschool" fonts
as the previous version, and also introduces the use of several techniques not
typically used elsewhere to make the fonts more palettable for modern use
(aspect correction, embedded bitmaps to bypass anti-aliasing). Also the online
font index has more details regarding each font.

I would say that a very detailed online font index and fonts that are now much
more palettable for modern use, may well be grounds for new discussions.

~~~
dang
Alright, we'll remove the dupe penalty.

------
kristopolous
I'm using it for my latest bootsta/386¹. It's really the best version of these
fonts out there. It's exceptionally accurate. I've gotten accuracy that just
simply wasn't possible for the last 2 versions of bootstra. The fonts are
really quite something

[1] you've _probably_ already seen it, it's this one
[https://github.com/kristopolous/BOOTSTRA.386](https://github.com/kristopolous/BOOTSTRA.386)

------
bitwize
Oh my God, they have the Tandy 2000 font.

------
rbanffy
It never ceases to amaze me that the IBM PC got these fonts when IBM big iron
terminals had a much nicer, modern geometric sans serif font. They just needed
to use the 5100 font or terminal fonts they were already using.

~~~
viler
That's part of the reason I've added more fonts from more compatibles: some of
them had much nicer ones - the Cordata and Wyse machines in particular more
than doubled the resolution of the original IBM fonts, and indeed achieved
something quite close to that 'classic terminal' look.

The IBM PC was meant to support both color and monochrome displays though
("color" meaning "cheap TV-resolution CGA" :-)), and there are hints that both
functions were originally supposed to go on the same adapter board. That plus
cost cutting are probably why the same ROM chip contained both the color and
monochrome fonts, so neither of them could have been very high-res...

~~~
rbanffy
I love that the Cordata PPC-400 was included. It's one of the most beautiful
screen fonts I've ever seen.

~~~
viler
Yep! They seemed to be quite proud of it in the PPC-400 User's Guide. It goes
on to describe the availability of various character attributes (reverse
video, underlining, blinking, intensity) as "part of Corona's continuing
effort to provide you with the finest and most advanced products".

Definitely a well-done design. If it wasn't for the ToshibaSat 8x14 font (also
included), that'd be my code editor font of choice now.

~~~
rbanffy
If I hadn't made my own 3270 font, I'd seriously consider it.

------
dilandau
For linux users, you can open the .FON files with fontforge, then go to file
menu -> generate to create a .bdf file (I prefer to use bitmap over ttf to
avoid any artifacts).

~~~
klodolph
If you are on Linux, you will probably want to convert to OTB instead. Pango
has dropped support for BDF and it’s just a matter of time before your distro
gets hit with the full effect (if you are on a “stable” channel then you
probably haven’t gotten hit yet). If you use old-school X programs without
Pango you may not notice, but nearly everything on Linux that doesn’t look
like XTerm uses Pango.

See:
[https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BitmapFontConversion](https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BitmapFontConversion)

As a side effect, the fonts will probably work better as OTB anyway. At least,
that’s my experience.

~~~
bitwize
Makes sense. Bdf is an X11 format, and X is deprecated technology. X font
rendering is certainly deprecated.

~~~
dilandau
Wayland fans: so desperate for traction that they'll snap up any chance to
spread false information. Or maybe this commenter doesn't know the difference
between gnome/pango and xorg/xft?

Xorg isn't going anywhere for a very long time.

~~~
bitwize
Of course I know the difference. Pango is part of the "new world" in which all
text rendering is done client-side. BDF is the old X11 bitmap format, used for
X11's server-side text rendering. It makes sense for Pango to move away from
supporting it, as hardly anyone uses BDF anymore except for backward
compatibility with legacy X applications, and the world is moving away from X.

Matter of fact, rendering _everything_ is moving to client side, hence why X
is increasingly unnecessary, and why Wayland is designed the way it is.

Oh, and among "Wayland fans" you can count just about everyone who knows
anything about the Linux graphics stack, except maybe for Keith Packard. So
yes, getting traction is important, because no one wants to keep maintaining
the broken X architecture. Xorg is largely maintained by Red Hat who have put
it in "hard maintenance" mode with virtually no new development.

~~~
dilandau
Ah yes, the "new world" that the developers like and that ultimately
complicates things for end-users, and obsoletes 30+ years of software in the
process.

I prefer stability.

~~~
bitwize
You want to talk complicating things for end users? Does "XF86Config" mean
anything to you? X only got halfway decent when the KMS driver came out,
migrating much of the video hardware functionality OUT of X and into the
kernel. The X server is thus now largely a state tracker for an obsolete
protocol.

Meanwhile, Wayland has pretty much the same graphics server architecture that
Windows and macOS had _decades ago_. It finally brings the Linux desktop
architecture in line with the state of the art. There may be a rough
transition period, but the faster the Linux community pulls together and rips
the X band-aid off, the shorter that period will be.

------
int_19h
I wish somebody made a bitmap font based on VGA 8x16, but scaled up to look
nice on 4K screens. I'd seriously pay for that.

~~~
viler
[https://int10h.org/blog/2018/05/flexi-ibm-vga-scalable-
truet...](https://int10h.org/blog/2018/05/flexi-ibm-vga-scalable-truetype-
font/) ? :) (Edit: not a bitmap font, but to make it scalable to arbitrary
sizes it pretty much has to be an outlined .ttf).

~~~
int_19h
Nope, that's not it. An algorithmic approach won't do here - it needs an
actual human filling pixels in on the basis of aesthetics rather than math.

It doesn't have to be scalable to arbitrary sizes - 2x of the original would
do just fine on a wide variety of high-DPI screens, just as the original
itself worked on a very broad historical range of non-high-DPI ones.

~~~
viler
OK, then I think I get what you mean - scaling up the glyphs 2x and adding
more bitmap detail, but perceptually sticking to the original shapes as
closely as possible.

That's something I thought of in the past but it proved trickier than I
expected to actually get nice enough results, so I never actually got very far
with it but it's not impossible.

~~~
int_19h
Yep, it's basically high-res pixel art. So it needs a good artist, and a lot
of time. I doubt anybody's likely to do it as a free project, hence why I
mentioned paying for it - a crowdsourcing arrangement, perhaps

------
emmanueloga_
Did anybody else get a strong emotional reaction to these? I connect them to
my BBS years. Reminded me of chat sessions on Terminate, ZMODEM downloads that
take just too long to finish (only to discover at least one corrupt zip file
part after all that wait!). Mild PTSD memories of my mom chasing me with a
telephone bill... :-)

------
flobosg
I am using an old laptop as a console-only typewriter. This might come in
handy for inspiration, thank you!

------
magoon
A trip down memory lane, bringing back so much just looking at the fonts. It’s
amazing how much I associate each company’s historical fonts with their brand.

------
jbverschoor
Surprisingly legible

------
plg
WOW there is a strange visual illusion for me, the red fonts seem to be
sitting 3D <behind> the rest of the page

~~~
kmill
Two possibilities come to mind. The red channel in each pixel might be at the
left, causing all the pure red text to be slightly shifted relative to the
other text.

Another might be chromatic aberration if you wear glasses. (This causes the
Windows logo to look comically maligned for me.) Whether it's behind or in
front of the text would depend on the tilt of your head.

~~~
zerocrates
Wow I posted at basically the same time, and _also_ mentioned the Microsoft
logo. It's just a perfect test case to see this kind of thing happening, I
guess.

------
ggerules
Thank you for posting this! It brings back a lot of memories.

------
urb
Amir rulezz!

