
A collection of text mode fonts, system fonts and BIOS fonts from DOS-era PCs - BerislavLopac
http://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/
======
TheRealDunkirk
This reminds me of the time I asked about the "rock" font (from the Slackware
days) on StackOverflow, and got WAY more information than I could possibly
have expected: [https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/226593/where-
can-i-...](https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/226593/where-can-i-find-a-
modern-version-of-the-rock-or-t-console-typeface) Sadly, I'm not in a Linux
console very often these days.

~~~
Andrenid
What an incredible answer. I love posts like that.

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yankcrime
Related, and similarly awesome:

SGI screen fonts: [https://njr.sabi.net/2015/11/01/sgi-screen-fonts-
converted-f...](https://njr.sabi.net/2015/11/01/sgi-screen-fonts-converted-
for-os-x/)

DEC VT220 font: [http://blog.fosketts.net/2015/10/06/the-best-mac-os-x-
termin...](http://blog.fosketts.net/2015/10/06/the-best-mac-os-x-terminal-
font-glass-tty-vt220/) (related blog post as canonical site appears to be
down)

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zuminator
Here's Commodore 64:
[http://style64.org/c64-truetype](http://style64.org/c64-truetype) Atari
400/800:
[http://members.bitstream.net/marksim/atarimac/fonts.html](http://members.bitstream.net/marksim/atarimac/fonts.html)
and more Tandy fonts:
[http://www.kreativekorp.com/software/fonts/trs80.shtml](http://www.kreativekorp.com/software/fonts/trs80.shtml)

Just looking at these fonts makes me smell the techy plastic of those old
consoles.

~~~
statico
+1 for KreativeKorp's wonderful archive of fonts:
[http://www.kreativekorp.com/software/fonts/index.shtml](http://www.kreativekorp.com/software/fonts/index.shtml)

They also have the Apple II fonts, which I (incorrectly) superimposed on a
VT520 using WebGL here: [https://langworth.com](https://langworth.com)

~~~
a_t48
Save functionality doesn't work on your site :(

~~~
statico
It's not that long. You got farther than anyone else though ;)

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maxaf
The IBM VGA8 sent me into a funk of nostalgia not only for the early 90s, when
a trusty 386 was my best and only friend, but also for 99+, when my first
forays into Linux forever cemented the default console font in my visual
memory.

This is my terminal font now, and I don't care what anyone says.

~~~
endgame
Oh good, it's not just me. I've set it as my default font for emacs, terminal
and window manager, and it's really great watching people get all nostalgic
when they visit my desk.

(Though I'm on PxPlus VGA9.)

~~~
acheron
Ha, yes, I've done this too over the past year. Including on isolated networks
where transferring things from the Internet is mildly complicated, but I gotta
have my PxPlus VGA9.

It is amazing how comforting it is to use that font. It's not the first one I
encountered certainly, but it was there for what seems like a long time, and
for many formative experiences, I guess.

------
jheriko
"For TrueType fonts, Microsoft has somehow seen fit to require an unsupported
registry hack"

this is an interesting comment. iirc it is because most 'fixed width' true
type fonts aren't actually fixed width enough to not make a mess out of the
console when used there... any pixels that bleed out of the fixed width bounds
are left behind when removing the character.

[https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20070516-00/?p=...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20070516-00/?p=26843)

~~~
Asooka
So how do Linux and Mac graphical terminal emulators manage to use monospaced
true-type fonts? Granted, sometimes box drawing characters don't appear fully
seamless, and sometimes a character printed on console isn't in the chosen
font, so the fallback font mechanism kicks in and the glyph is rendered with
some non-monospaced font and looks ugly and out of place, but by and large, it
seems that most terminal emulators manage to work just fine with true-type
monospaced fonts.

~~~
bonzini
They redraw more than it would be strictly necessary. Remember that the linked
post refers to Windows 95, and the corresponding state of the art in the Unix
world was bitmapped X11 fonts.

------
cmiller1
Anyone have something similar for the original mac fonts?
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/Original...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/Original_Mac_fonts.png)

~~~
tyingq
There's this:
[http://www.kreativekorp.com/software/fonts/urbanrenewal.shtm...](http://www.kreativekorp.com/software/fonts/urbanrenewal.shtml)

Edit: And this:
[http://www.andreagrell.de/eworld/download1.html](http://www.andreagrell.de/eworld/download1.html)
(Fontforge can read/convert .sit "suitcase" files)

~~~
zuminator
Thanks. That ParcPlace font really takes me back. I still have a copy of my
beloved August 1981 "Smalltalk Issue" Byte Magazine, which I reread so many
times.

~~~
rbanffy
I copied Cream to Apple IIs (as a "shape table font") that was used on many
educational titles from Senac (a Brazilian organization that was doing
research in computers in education)

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potato_mOWX2EVX
It's a picture :(

[http://int10h.org/images/text_mode_lives!.png](http://int10h.org/images/text_mode_lives!.png)

~~~
grenoire
Pretty sure encoding it into DOM would take way too many elements and be
unnecessarily slow to load.

~~~
astrodust
Someone needs to write an ANSI to CSS converter that can work inline.

------
acheron
Discussion from when this came out last year:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11021430](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11021430)

------
joshaidan
It's like having a BBS in my web browser.

This does bring back a lot of memories of sitting in front of a 486 trying to
get Commander Keen to load.

~~~
nils-m-holm
Make that a 286! :) A 486 was far out of my budget back then. Fun days,
anyway!

------
thriftwy
If someone was wondering, the website is made using IBM VGA8 font. Going to
try it as my konsole font.

Edit: Can't get konsole to use true-type fonts.

~~~
digi_owl
Actually the top right holds a font switcher.

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userbinator
The "PS/2 thin fonts" ([http://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-
fonts/fontlist/#ibmps2_isa](http://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-
fonts/fontlist/#ibmps2_isa) ) look very similar to the larger sizes of the X
"fixed" font (
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_(typeface)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_\(typeface\))
) which I've taken a liking to using for just about everything, including in
my terminal and editor windows.

Also noticed that the owner of the site, VileR, seemed familiar... then
realised he's one of the authors of this astounding demo:
[https://trixter.oldskool.org/2015/04/07/8088-mph-we-break-
al...](https://trixter.oldskool.org/2015/04/07/8088-mph-we-break-all-your-
emulators/)

------
tyingq
Nice. Related, if you need some old-school look bitmap fonts, but need more
unicode glyphs: [https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs-
fonts.html](https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs-fonts.html)

------
tannhaeuser
I always found BIOS fonts ugly, especially the uppercase and lowercase D
letters.

What I _do_ like are monospace fonts having one-story lower A letters. My
short list of modern fonts with this feature:

\- Monaco (Mac-only, 9pt and 12pt bitmap); "()" and "[]" appear circle- and
square-like, resp.

\- Anonymous 9 (Mac-only, bitmap)

\- Anonymous (TTF, like Anonymous 9)

Plus, some monospace fonts have one-story as cursive/italics letter forms.

Anonymous Pro has two-story a and has much more complete Unicode coverage; has
more latin-like proportions (x-height) and has (not strictly necessary) serifs
on eg. letter C, lower letter F, etc. so probably doesn't go well with a sans
font for other text?

~~~
statico
Monaco bitmap 9pt should have a warm place in every classic Mac user's heart,
along with Helvetica 9pt.

If you want a flashback into Classic Mac development, a while back I tried
some development with MetroWerks CodeWarrior, Symantic C++, and more, and I
took screenshots: [https://imgur.com/a/scNE2](https://imgur.com/a/scNE2)

~~~
naikrovek
I spent so long looking for a font that rendered on Windows like Monaco 10 did
on Mac that I wound up just making it myself, with a few changes. I called it
Monocle and I still use it.

[https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/517659/monoclefix...](https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/517659/monoclefixed)

------
bhouston
Missing the Apple II fonts:
[http://www.kreativekorp.com/software/fonts/apple2.shtml](http://www.kreativekorp.com/software/fonts/apple2.shtml)

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exogeny
My BBS nostalgia is spiraling out of control right now. This is so rad.

------
rbanffy
Shameless plug:

Also, not pixel-perfect and with many symbols absent from the original, is
[https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font](https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font).

Sadly, it never made it to the PCs, being confined to mainframe terminals.

~~~
SwellJoe
That's actually really nice. Reminds me a little of Computer Modern. Very
legible.

~~~
rbanffy
Thank you!

------
twoodfin
The Hyundai XT clone my parents bought for me had an ATI Small Wonder Graphics
Solution card. Such a tease: It came with a demo diskette that could show off
the 640x200 16-color mode it (and my monitor) supported, but of course no
games used it as anything but CGA.

~~~
ge0rg
I remember those Wonder devices as well. They could emulate Hercules or CGA,
but not EGA. The two available modes didn't look very different on a
monochrome monitor though

------
jaclaz
Some time ago I was looking for DOS era fonts (for the grub4dos project) and
found quite a few, see here (there are some previews of converted fonts):

[http://reboot.pro/topic/19076-grub4dos-menu-font-
type/](http://reboot.pro/topic/19076-grub4dos-menu-font-type/)

I just checked the links to the actual fonts on the thread above and they seem
still all working.

------
rubatuga
For anyone wondering how to set their macOS Terminal font to IBM VGA, select
the font, set your font size to 16 and turn off the anti-aliasing checkbox.

------
jasonrhaas
Love this website, we need more sites like this!

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kozak
How bad is the legal status of this web site?

~~~
LeonM
I'm curious about this. Can anyone elaborate on this?

I mean, the fonts on this site are >30 years old, so:

\- would it really be 'illegal' to share these files

\- would the copyright holders (say, IBM) have any reason to take a site like
this down?

~~~
antientropic
Copyright terms are much longer than 30 years, so unfortunately, it's probably
illegal without permission from the copyright holders. It's unlikely that they
will take action, though.

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equalunique
This is quite appealing

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fbnlsr
Too bad most of these can't be installed on a Mac :(

~~~
_joel
Which ones? Did a straw poll of the .ttf fonts and I could install all of
them.

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z3t4
too bad they dont work in the browser

~~~
kowdermeister
They do if you convert them to webfonts, it's a few seconds with FontSquirrel

~~~
z3t4
they will not be pixel perfect. antialias make them blurry. i would love to be
proven wrong though.

~~~
kowdermeister
But they do work in the browser :) I can live with antialias and other things
and other imperfections. Old monitors were blurry too.

~~~
mikejmoffitt
Old monitors were not blurry in good condition, and the distortions from
applying un-needed AA to these fonts don't resemble what an out of focus
monitor will do.

