Category: Misc

Some answers emerge about IBM's original 'Nordic' code page for the PC. Rather predictably, we're left with even more questions... including a long list of CGA/MDA character ROMs and NLS (National Language Support) diskettes which are still not accounted for.

Imagine you're in South Africa or Brazil, and one day you wake up to find that your country has wedged itself firmly in the Nordics. What happened? Why, a wild 8-bit PC character set happened, of course! Let's see if we can make some sense of it.

Believe it or not, it's possible to transport ancient CRTs across continents, even with today's shipping services pulling out all the stops on incompetence.  Here's how an IBM Color Display was packed, shipped, and lived to tell the tale.

CRTs get all the retro-hype, but oldschool portable PCs had slimmer alternatives: monochrome/grayscale LCDs, orange plasma panels, and yellow electroluminescent ones.  Why not add those too, and throw in a little bonus tool to emulate how some of them faked grayscale "shading" on 1-bit monochrome?

As Kermit the Frog and his IBM 5151 display once commiserated with Greta Thunberg, "it's not easy being green".  This update here should make it less difficult - and there's also amber, various shades of white, and a few more settings you can tweak.

...or: Who needs shaders - just do it the slow way!  A Windows batch file with a bunch of tunable options, so you can apply the effect to a still image or a video, and still be back in time for dinner (or the next geological epoch, whichever comes last).

Code projects are now hosted on GitHub, so you all get shiny new download links to match.  Also: a Fontraption update, and a split in the ranks.

A few techniques derived by trial-and-error, and some obvious pitfalls to avoid.  May prove useful to you other amateur CRT photographers out there.

How to migrate away from a centralized, restricted platform and keep your cool and your "link juice" (disclaimer: retainment of cool may vary).

Not so new anymore.

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