Comments on: Typography in 8 bits: System fonts

By: Ken Jennings

Ken Jennings — Fri, 18 May 2012 15:31:00 +0000

The atari 8-bits have an alternate mode for text display using 10 scan lines rather than 8. The last 32 characters which contain all the lowercase letters are displayed shifted down two scan lines allowing better descenders. I saw this used in a few word processors and other productivity software. Yes, this requires using a different font, either an entirely new font or a RAM copy of the default ROM font with the last 32 characters shifted in memory to use the extra scan lines correctly.

By: Rob Ward

Rob Ward — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 11:39:51 +0000

Could you extend the concept to the anti-aliased fonts on the Acorn Archimedes/RISC OS machines. That technology has rarely been surpassed. What they could achieve with even just a 16 colour palette was amazing!

By: stinky ox

stinky ox — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 10:29:51 +0000

I believe the PET font was designed by Leonard Tramiel. He told me he did it when we worked together at Atari.

By: Tim Locke

Tim Locke — Sat, 07 May 2011 15:29:14 +0000

The MSX font characters are stored in the ROM as 8×8 cells. The characters are only 5 pixels wide and are left-aligned in the cells leaving three blank pixels on the right. The graphic characters typically use the full 8 pixels of width.

The MSX video chips have two text modes, screens 0 and 1. In screen 0, only the left 6 pixels of each character is displayed in 40 columns giving a resolution of 240×192. The MSX2 video chip added an 80 column mode giving a resolution of 480×192. In screen 1, all 8 pixels are displayed in 32 columns giving a resolution of 256×192. The left-aligned, 5 pixel wide font displays properly in both screen modes but obviously the apparent spacing between characters changes. The graphic characters are truncated in screen 0 mode. Some survive this truncation quite well while others do not.

The text modes all have 24 rows (192 pixels) via BASIC although the MSX2 and later video chips were capable of displaying up to 26.5 lines (212 pixels).

I believe you have mistakenly stated the height of capital letters as 6 instead of 7 for the MSX, C64 and Amstrad CPC entries.

By: codeman38

codeman38 — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 14:49:59 +0000

I did a conversion of the font used in later models of the TRS-80 Color Computer 2 as well as the CoCo 3. Earlier versions of the CoCo 2, as well as its trans-Atlantic cousin the Dragon 64, used a slightly different font with a non-slashed zero, a square “O”, and no lowercase.

http://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/trash_eighties

By: Technologie In Blood » Blog Archive » 8-Bit Fonts Add Retro Flair to Modern Computers

Mon, 28 Mar 2011 19:15:39 +0000

[...] Typography in 8 bits: System Fonts [DamienG via O'Reilly Radar] [...]

By: Bryan

Bryan — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 18:57:37 +0000

It’s great to see the Atari fonts again. Thank you!

By: Hanseat-Unikat

Hanseat-Unikat — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 13:41:11 +0000

8-Bit-Txt…

In längst vergessenen Tagen, als wahrlich noch niemand von einem weltumfassenden Netzwerk namens Internet (=Facebook) geträumt hatte und man Rechnern noch beim Arbeiten zuschauen konnte, da gab es die ersten Vorreiter digitaler Schriften. Diese waren r…

By: Ellie K

Ellie K — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 01:30:27 +0000

@goto80 I just checked asciiarena.com. You make a good point. It is a cute site though. Scary colors!

I think Sinclair ZX Spectrum is the most elegant of the lot here. This was a wonderful post, Damien. One question on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum: You said

While the machine has a default high-contrast scheme the also suffered has a poor quality RF modulator

I assume that was a typo. But I am curious, what also suffered?

By: Torley

Torley — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 00:28:11 +0000

Damien, I love when someone fills a hole in the world by sharing knowledge like this! Must-read article about early computer fonts… mmm, crunchy.

It’s so funny because as I was reading it, I thought the maker of Cathode would like seeing this — only to see your line at the bottom, ahhh!

Thank you for sharing, and if Amiga is legit to include, I’d sure like to see it as well.

Big vote up for the C64 PETSCII as goto80 mentioned, I loved seeing those graphics used in games, BBSes, and when I printed party invitations on my old dot matrix.