it seems they have an iOS version now too that lets you SSH to your servers. Also I believe the demo version would appear as tho the cathode screen was about to fail and get worse and worse.
Great, except not authentic. They forget that image on the screen, affects the image on the screen. So basically same dim image looks different than same bright image. Geometry often also changed when brightnes was changed. It's complex thing to receate authentic CRT.
Also many emulations fail with phosphor decay in very obvious ways. So it's not being done in a correctly at all. This cathode project is good, but many of these are clearly done by people, who haven't ever used the authentic thing and do not know what it should be like.
I remember that I laughed when people were talking about 25 ms TFT being slow. From good green / amber display you could still read text after 5 seconds since powering it off. ;)
I had one of these, lovely. http://sales.hansotten.nl/uploads/msx/monitoren/IMG_6798.JPG And this beauty is pretty modern one, because it's color display. With many older CRTs you had to use 40 chars per line, because image was so fuzzy that 80x25 would have been unreadable.
About noise, I have seen some extremely cheap and old VGA adapters generate so much noise and timing jitter into signal, that it looks like old TV even with modern dispalys. I got really baffed by it when I first encountered it.
> Also I believe the demo version would appear as tho the cathode screen was about to fail and get worse and worse.
Correct, which actually makes me prefer the demo to the "final" product, it's really fun to see the display "degrade" over time. And the various sounds are awesome (to annoy colleagues).
In a modern world where we backlight semiconductors to produce high dpi screens, it almost feels weird to think we used to fire electron guns towards our eyes. I was always partial to the amber screen.
Has anyone recently played with an old Asteroids cabinet? The screen is a black and white CRT. When you fire a missile, the screen effect is insanely bright. I'd forgotten just how intense that was.
I can't wait until someone pieces together an art piece that makes use of all the crazy analog video effects that we used to take for granted, but now look like alien technology.
Way back in the 90's my CRT monitor went out. Money was tight so I had to wait a couple of weeks before I could replace it. I went to a local computer repair shop (as in, actual repair, like replacing blown capacitors on mainboards and such) to see what I could get for cheap, as a stopgap. The guy had an old monochrome CRT he had repaired--the kind with green pixels--probably 6-7 years old at the time. He sold it to me for like 8 bucks. I figured I could at least use bitchx and links on it until I could get a new monitor. After a few hours in front of it, I started feeling really itchy, and the screen had enough static charge to raise the hairs on my forearm if I moved near it. Pretty sure it was shooting cancer directly into my face. Good times!
I played with an old Asteroids Deluxe machine just last weekend! They have one at Barcade in Manhatten on West 24th.
The vector display sits face up in the bottom of the cabinet, and the game is reflected on a one-way mirror set up in front of a backdrop. Those super-bright vector graphics are even more impressive when they look like they're floating!
It's interesting that xterm still provides an emulation for the old Tektronix vector terminals. I'm not aware of any software currently in use, besides PAW and gnuplot, which is still using Tektronix.
My memory is a little fuzzy. I remember a game at the St. Louis arcade museum that was b/w vector and very bright when I went there about 20 years ago. It could have been Space Wars, though.
In my X-ray crystallography/structural biology lab we still use CRTs from over a decade old Silicon Graphics systems. They are the only displays that can do a 120Hz horizontal scan, which is darn critical when you are looking at protein and drug structures in quad-buffered stereo!
Sadly, the CRTs are dying off over time and it gets harder to find replacements that can work as well as they do. There are LCD alternatives, like Zalman, but they never impressed me much :-(
We have had good results with the Barco Medical Diagnostics monitor lines - they are the only thing other than CRT's that our Radiologists are willing to use.
I've been developing a Clojure on Node.js curses terminal UI library[1] for some months, and though development has been going stronger than ever lately, I feel my motivation doubled up in seeing my interfaces displayed in this glorious orange glow. I should start working on a text game about being alone in a spaceship or a war-ravaged post-apocalypse right now. Suddenly my brother will go from joking that my computer must crash a lot because all he ever sees is terminals to being in awe.
I had tried Cathode for OSX but it didn't work, and now you come and tell me I can have it for free on my linux dev box and that it works flawlessly? Thank you.
Looks pretty good! In reality[1] the "CRT effect" isn't quite so intense, but I think that's just down to settings. This definitely has the right glowy and slightly-fuzzy feel to it.
> In reality[1] the "CRT effect" isn't quite so intense
By CRT do you mean the "lensing" of non-flat CRT screens or something else? The Wyse 55 is a fairly modern display (it was released after 1988 since it follows the 150 though not sure exactly when), earlier models had more (late 70s to early 80s) had more curvature (and lensing)
This reminds me that I have two Wyse WY-85 green screen terminals in the attic. I got them when they were being thrown out by a university in 1997 or 1998. They've been sitting there getting more and more depressed and dusty. At some point I really need to grab a Pi and a USB<->serial adapter and get them up and running. I've seen some blog pages from a couple of other folks who have managed to get them working in a similar way.
At this rate my wife will throw them out with the perfectly valid excuse that if I haven't set them up in the last fifteen years, I'm unlikely to do so in the next fifteen.
Just a quick glance at those screenshots and I'm instantly transported twenty years into the past, sitting in the campus computer lab printing out a report at 3 a.m. the day it's due.
Someone™ posted an issue last july that this exquisite piece of software retro art did not compile on OS X. After a while someone™ actually managed to compile it on OSX, and the original author is working on a port, but until then we have to make do with the Cathode app.
Only problem with the Cathode app is that it flickers more and more till you get an epileptic fit if you don't upgrade to the paid version.
Yeah, the only thing missing is the cathode ray 'desync' effect which occurs when you first switch on the Pip-boy.
That level of 'polish' on the Pip boy is fairly amazing in trying to emulate a good ole cathode ray tube ...
I would really like to do something like this in HTML5 + WebGL for some retro game ideas I have. Like, even doing this with a Z-Machine interpreter (Zork, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, etc.) would be fun.
Funny how being around in the days when this was common I couldn't wait to see the future. Now I am in the future and people get excited about recreating the past. I can't win.
[+] [-] SG-|11 years ago|reply
http://www.secretgeometry.com/apps/cathode/
it seems they have an iOS version now too that lets you SSH to your servers. Also I believe the demo version would appear as tho the cathode screen was about to fail and get worse and worse.
[+] [-] Sami_Lehtinen|11 years ago|reply
Also many emulations fail with phosphor decay in very obvious ways. So it's not being done in a correctly at all. This cathode project is good, but many of these are clearly done by people, who haven't ever used the authentic thing and do not know what it should be like.
I remember that I laughed when people were talking about 25 ms TFT being slow. From good green / amber display you could still read text after 5 seconds since powering it off. ;)
I had one of these, lovely. http://sales.hansotten.nl/uploads/msx/monitoren/IMG_6798.JPG And this beauty is pretty modern one, because it's color display. With many older CRTs you had to use 40 chars per line, because image was so fuzzy that 80x25 would have been unreadable.
About noise, I have seen some extremely cheap and old VGA adapters generate so much noise and timing jitter into signal, that it looks like old TV even with modern dispalys. I got really baffed by it when I first encountered it.
[+] [-] aragot|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] masklinn|11 years ago|reply
Correct, which actually makes me prefer the demo to the "final" product, it's really fun to see the display "degrade" over time. And the various sounds are awesome (to annoy colleagues).
Plus Cathode provides configurable line speeds.
[+] [-] PostOnce|11 years ago|reply
Almost bought a mac just for that app :p
I'd still buy it if it were available on linux, it's still prettier than this, even though this is very very good.
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] peatmoss|11 years ago|reply
Has anyone recently played with an old Asteroids cabinet? The screen is a black and white CRT. When you fire a missile, the screen effect is insanely bright. I'd forgotten just how intense that was.
I can't wait until someone pieces together an art piece that makes use of all the crazy analog video effects that we used to take for granted, but now look like alien technology.
[+] [-] coolj|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] digisign|11 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroids_%28video_game%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_monitor
[+] [-] arrogant|11 years ago|reply
The vector display sits face up in the bottom of the cabinet, and the game is reflected on a one-way mirror set up in front of a backdrop. Those super-bright vector graphics are even more impressive when they look like they're floating!
[+] [-] sklogic|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edkennedy|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fuzzix|11 years ago|reply
There was a rumour that people who played on a Vectrex (a vector display home console) would experience eye damage after protracted sessions.
[+] [-] ashmud|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teddyh|11 years ago|reply
② http://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/
[+] [-] g047f4c3|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teddyh|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thrownaway2424|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zura|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shiven|11 years ago|reply
Sadly, the CRTs are dying off over time and it gets harder to find replacements that can work as well as they do. There are LCD alternatives, like Zalman, but they never impressed me much :-(
[+] [-] centizen|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raverbashing|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kator|11 years ago|reply
https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term/tree/master/a...
I've been playing with them in iTerm2 and having flashbacks.
[+] [-] goldfeld|11 years ago|reply
I had tried Cathode for OSX but it didn't work, and now you come and tell me I can have it for free on my linux dev box and that it works flawlessly? Thank you.
[1]: https://github.com/goldfeld/i9n
[+] [-] Gracana|11 years ago|reply
[1] My Wyse-55: http://i.imgur.com/7x2JdmV.jpg
[+] [-] pjc50|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] masklinn|11 years ago|reply
By CRT do you mean the "lensing" of non-flat CRT screens or something else? The Wyse 55 is a fairly modern display (it was released after 1988 since it follows the 150 though not sure exactly when), earlier models had more (late 70s to early 80s) had more curvature (and lensing)
[+] [-] hudibras|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lwh|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zardoz84|11 years ago|reply
https://plus.google.com/118048310717476799717/posts/4CSV9LHq...
https://plus.google.com/118048310717476799717/posts/diBzDKJ2...
[+] [-] corysama|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] konradb|11 years ago|reply
At this rate my wife will throw them out with the perfectly valid excuse that if I haven't set them up in the last fifteen years, I'm unlikely to do so in the next fifteen.
[+] [-] hudibras|11 years ago|reply
It's weird how the brain works.
[+] [-] thomasfl|11 years ago|reply
Only problem with the Cathode app is that it flickers more and more till you get an epileptic fit if you don't upgrade to the paid version.
[+] [-] rbanffy|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sschueller|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pervycreeper|11 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] mercurial|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kelvin0|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hayksaakian|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VikingCoder|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coldcode|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chowyuncat|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] safeaim|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bbunix|11 years ago|reply