A Vintage Terminal Emulator for OS X

http://www.secretgeometry.com/apps/cathode/

by stephencelis • 16 years ago

26 10 16 years ago

thristian• 16 years ago

I 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

jonhendry• 16 years ago

Metaphorics: perhaps a copy of a Symbolics LISP machine font?

meastham2• 16 years ago

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.

tomwans• 16 years ago

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...

mturmon• 15 years ago

Same. I have a ATI Radeon X1900 XT on a Mac Pro 2,1.

meastham2• 15 years ago

This is the model I have. Too bad, seemed like it would be amusing.

joshu• 16 years ago

This is AWESOME.

Corrado• 16 years ago

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.

code_duck• 16 years ago

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.

veidr• 16 years ago

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...

A Vintage Terminal Emulator for OS X

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