A Vintage Terminal Emulator for OS X
secretgeometry.comI don't have an OS X machine available, so I can't try it out, but I was interested in the "classic bitmap fonts" so I downloaded it to poke around. Unfortunately, all the "classic bitmap fonts" have been given carefully non-trademark-infringing names, so it's hard for me to identify them. Here's what I've managed so far:
286: From the original IBM PC
Admiral: From the Commodore 64
CO2: ???
Lucky Heaven: Based on various fonts used in 80s arcade games, but named for Nintendo
Metaphorics: ???
Pomme: From the Apple II (if you were lucky enough to have one that supported 80-column output)
Viti: From the DEC VT100 video terminal
I'm somewhat interested in CRT emulation (other examples I know include [1] and [2]) so I also tried to examine the fragment shaders used, but it seems they're encrypted or bytecoded or something. Oh well.
ALSO: the included fonts only have the basic ASCII character set; I'd be interested to hear if things like the VT100 alternate character set are also supported.
[1]: http://www.slack.net/~ant/libs/ntsc.html [2]: http://board.byuu.org/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=147
Metaphorics: perhaps a copy of a Symbolics LISP machine font?
Ha ha, awesome, but I'm not going to go through the rigamarole of inputting my credit card details (or spend $20, for that matter) to buy it.
I wonder why this app is not on the App Store? I have a hard time believing that this app wouldn't sell 100 to 50,000 times as many copies at $2 on the App Store than it would outside the store (at any price).
Of course, with the capricious nature of Apple app stores, you never know what the actual reason is...
Did anybody else get oddly broken graphics when they tried this out? I see a some large red triangles on the borders that fade out and I never see any characters.
Same. I have a ATI Radeon X1900 XT on a Mac Pro 2,1.
This is the model I have. Too bad, seemed like it would be amusing.
yeah same. using a 2006 iMac ... I'm assuming its a graphics card problem? The site says all of the graphics are rendered on the GPU...
This is AWESOME.
Yea, but is it $20 awesome? That seems a bit steep for a terminal emulator with unknown features. Especially given that iTerm2 beta is free and has neato things like split screen. Just my $.02 (not $20) worth.
There is a limited free version, at least. If you just want to enjoy it for the novelty factor and not make it your full time/work terminal, it should be adequate.