Bits and Bytes (1983)
-
Episode 11 down, is there a reason that a lot of programs used green as a color for text and what not?
-
@connorsoliver said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
Episode 11 down, is there a reason that a lot of programs used green as a color for text and what not?
Yes, in the OLD days, monitors only came in green, it was the only colour. It was "black and white" with the white being green. Green is for visibility, it's easy on the eyes and very clear. Some were made in amber or light blue, but almost all were green and were so common that they called them "green screens" (prior to the video term.)
Later when people had colour options, often green was (and is) still used for the same reason that they manufactured that way long ago... it's just easy to read. But others do it to be nostalgic.
-
@scottalanmiller said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
Later when people had colour options, often green was (and is) still used for the same reason that they manufactured that way long ago... it's just easy to read. But others do it to be nostalgic.
Kind of both reasons is why i set my terminal to this on my workstations.
-
Just finished up the series. So cool to see the mouse being introduced.
-
@JaredBusch said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
@scottalanmiller said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
Later when people had colour options, often green was (and is) still used for the same reason that they manufactured that way long ago... it's just easy to read. But others do it to be nostalgic.
Kind of both reasons is why i set my terminal to this on my workstations.
Same here. I love how it looks, and I love the feeling of being back in 1983.
I tend to use a slightly lighter green than you, and I make the background grey rather than black for lower contrast.
-
@connorsoliver said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
Just finished up the series. So cool to see the mouse being introduced.
You moved through that fast!
-
@scottalanmiller said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
@JaredBusch said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
@scottalanmiller said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
Later when people had colour options, often green was (and is) still used for the same reason that they manufactured that way long ago... it's just easy to read. But others do it to be nostalgic.
Kind of both reasons is why i set my terminal to this on my workstations.
Same here. I love how it looks, and I love the feeling of being back in 1983.
I tend to use a slightly lighter green than you, and I make the background grey rather than black for lower contrast.
I am just lazy and didn't get specific. I simply chose the built in green on black
-
@scottalanmiller said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
The Amiga 1000 in 1983 was handling 4,096 colours and 640x480 displays, too! Which seems silly now, but displaying colours and doing 3D rendering was unheard of back then.
Did Amiga sell a monitor that was capable of 640x480 at that time? That's a year before IBM had EGA, which was only 640x350, and four years before they finally got to 640x480 with VGA.
-
@CharlesHTN said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
Did Amiga sell a monitor that was capable of 640x480 at that time?
Yes, even with the original 1985 Amiga 1000 release. Not only did they sell it, I have the original model sitting here with me and it still works.
-
@scottalanmiller I interviewed at a place that asked about DOS the other week. They want the system to go away because it's unsupportable. Obviously not entirely up to the IT team there.
-
@travisdh1 said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
@scottalanmiller I interviewed at a place that asked about DOS the other week. They want the system to go away because it's unsupportable. Obviously not entirely up to the IT team there.
Was it actually DOS? Or just getting called that? Because DOS is used as a catch all for all kinds of things that people can't identify.
-
Episode 8 done. It seems that there was a lot more focus in childhood education and teaching kids real world things like using your bank account. There are kids today who can't write out a check.
-
@mary said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
Episode 8 done. It seems that there was a lot more focus in childhood education and teaching kids real world things like using your bank account. There are kids today who can't write out a check.
Yes, especially in tech. The early 80s taught so much more tech than schools do today. Like orders of magnitude more. We were taught command line skills, programming, how things worked. My nieces went through a STEM program with a programming focus and making it all the way to university they were never once actually shown what a programming language was or even what files and programs were! The most rudimentary basics of computing never even touched on, stuff we learned in elementary school and built on for years.
-
@scottalanmiller didn't the original Sim City load on DOS?
-
@mary said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
@scottalanmiller didn't the original Sim City load on DOS?
All games on PC prior to 2002 had to, and most long after did.
-
Episode 9 done. Strange to see how far we have come in graphics. Is there much difference today between monitors and TVs?
-
@scottalanmiller said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
@travisdh1 said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
@scottalanmiller I interviewed at a place that asked about DOS the other week. They want the system to go away because it's unsupportable. Obviously not entirely up to the IT team there.
Was it actually DOS? Or just getting called that? Because DOS is used as a catch all for all kinds of things that people can't identify.
I don't know for sure, it was in a different facility. The IT team that I interviewed with seemed to know wtf they were talking about, and were just as pleased at having it around as you would be.
-
@mary said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
Episode 9 done. Strange to see how far we have come in graphics. Is there much difference today between monitors and TVs?
Almost none today.
CRT monitors in the late 90s to early 00s were much higher resolution than TVs. Ever since the change to flat panels for everything, well, basically no difference. Even the "a TV has a tuner to receive OTA television" doesn't necessarily hold true.
-
@mary said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
Is there much difference today between monitors and TVs
Same as with monitors and speakers. Monitors are meant to "monitor" things and therefore are focused on faithful reproduction of what they are given. To be a television means it has a tuner for TV signals. There is obviously a ton of overlap. But a monitor doesn't imply that it can tune in television signals, and TV doesn't imply any intention of being used as a faithful reproduction device.
In practice, they are nearly the same thing and while people used to call monitors TVs all the time now people call TVs monitors all the time.
-
@travisdh1 said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
CRT monitors in the late 90s to early 00s were much higher resolution than TVs.
A typical late model, high quality CRT Television in the US was 525 lines and interlaced not progressive (which essentially makes the resolution only half as good.) So it was like having a resolution more like 262 lines. And not wide screen.
In computer terms, the old NTSC television standard was a lot like a 320x240 monitor resolution today, which is only 25% of a 640x480 resolution which itself is almost impossible to use today!
Televisions have to work with broadcast standards for resolution and dimensions. Computer monitors are free to be bigger, different shapes, vertical, higher resolution, whatever.
