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Comment by enkiv2 | Hacker News Reader

It might be more accurate to call this a simulation of vga text mode -- more early 90s than 1980s. Still, very cool.

Indeed, it looks deliciously like Ceefax: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceefax

I might get up at 5am and stare at it while listening to some easy-listening music.

I remember being in Germany a few years ago, and my friends' parents still used this (something equivalent in Germany) on their TV. It was effective.

This is called Teletext[1] (or in german: Videotext). It still widely used i guess. Even me sometimes used it to get informations about the sheduled TV-Program if not cellphone/tablet is in reach ;)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext

If you're watching this World Cup in Germany, you'll get regular notices on where to find further information (e.g. see Page 200 for current lineup)

Nope, that would be the rather unique text mode of the BBC Micro, which allowed you to do things like double-height letters. AFAIK, only Ceefax and the BBC Micro supported that.

This is definitely based on the standard EGA/VGA text mode (originally 80x25 characters) used by DOS. Mode 0x10 IIRC.

This is also using the standard codepage 437, which includes the characters for single and double borders. You could also rewrite the symbol table to make custom characters, which is what Norton Utilities and others did.

Mode 7 FTW along with all the artists who worked with its limited graphics support. The Mullard SAA5050 will have a special place in my heart forever.

What makes this VGA rather than CGA text mode?

(VGA is from 1987, by the way. :) )

I think it's actually EGA, but it's definitely not CGA. CGA only supports 4 colours and you can tell immediately from the dark blue that it's not CGA, because that's not one of the 4. There are also at least 5 colours shown, all of which happen to be from the standard EGA palette.

VGA generally used the same text modes as EGA and very few people actually had an EGA, so referring to it as a VGA mode is an understandable mistake.

There were actually some VGA-specific text modes (80x30 mode for example) as well as SVGA modes, but they weren't really used much because the EGA modes were good enough, more widely compatible, and IIRC the 80x30 mode was noticeably slower.

Also IIRC, 80x30 mode used a slightly different font than this one, which is why I think it's the usual 80x25 EGA rather than one of the other modes.

> CGA only supports 4 colours

In graphics modes.

In text mode it supported 16 IIRC: black, white, two greys and two shades of 6 colours.

You're right. I just looked it up, it seems I misremembered the CGA/EGA palette specs.

I'm pretty sure this is based on the standard EGA/VGA font, which is 8x14 pixels, whereas CGA only supported 8x8. Characters like A, N and M look noticeably more pixellated around the diagonals in CGA mode.

This is very much the one everyone would recognise from the VGA era, although it's actually an EGA mode.

Now we are into serious nit-picking land, but anyway:

The font used by this site is the "Fixedsys" system font from Windows, not any CGA/EGA/VGA text mode font.

I had MCGA in 1987 on an IBM PS2 and it could do that.

Whenever you see more than 4 colors on the screen simultaneously it kind of removes the CGA feel although there were hacks around it.

That's just in graphics mode though, in text mode CGA had 16 colors I believe.

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