On the Monochrome Edge
Jan. 18th, 2021 06:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerMaking some GIF files constrained to the graphics capabilities of the Tandy Color Computer 3 was an amusing diversion, if in the hard-to-articulate way that can accompany “fooling around with old computers” for me. As with the Apple II images I’ve generated before, I suppose the grainy, pixelated look of graphics boiled down from far more colourful originals left me contemplating and appreciating the work that went into the much cleaner “pixel art” of the past. A bit of searching (and wondering if modern pixel art tends towards canvases as small as possible, perhaps influenced more by the “sprites” of video game systems) turned up a gallery of screen-sized pictures, but so far I’ve only daydreamed about trying to get the Atari ST graphics among them onto Color Computer disk images to try out other image viewers run across (with a smattering of assuredly antique pictures on old disk images).
In a moving-along mood, I happened on a comment about an updated version (with an essential bug fix) of a cross-platform emulator for the Z80-powered TRS-80 computers. Having had two TRS-80 emulators be left behind by advancing operating systems to reduce me to getting an emulator for Windows running via Wine, I do appreciate having come across this new program. When I checked the web site to download it again, though, this time I noticed a GIF viewer for the TRS-80 also offered, which amused me anew. For all the comments about the low resolution of the original Model I (where, once you’d got past commands in BASIC, you weren’t so much turning individual “blocks” on and off as replacing regular characters with two-by-three combinations of those blocks), high-resolution graphics options were eventually available for the later models in the line. Even if I had to use a Windows utility via Wine to make up more disk images, I was able to get a few images displayed in the emulator, and after starting with “1-bit” black and white experimented to discover the viewer had some ability of its own to dither colours into patterns. Then, looking up the exact screen resolution with a thought or two of making better-looking pictures, I noticed the name of a GIF viewer programmed in the first days of the format and the final days of the computer, and managed to find it via an online archive of software. With the screen-blurring effects built into the emulator’s fanciest display mode, the images could almost look grey-scaled.
All of this work with black-and-white dithering, though, had me wondering about a different black-and-white computer from the last years of the 1980s. Someone with a Macintosh II would have been well off so far as viewing GIF files went, but those computers were expensive machines, and I got to wondering if there were any programs for the merely pricy earlier Macs without “Color QuickDraw.” Some searching did turn up a few of them, which I worked into the Mini vMac emulator to discover they mostly seemed to use “Floyd-Steinberg” rather than “Atkinson” dithering and noted pictures sized for a Color Computer 3 only took up a small part of even the “compact Macintosh” screen. I did also manage to find a GIF viewer for the Apple II, in a way looping back to my earlier boiled-down images, and then another “old computer image simulator” for the iPad. I made its “in-app purchase” to try and set up Color Computer 3 screen modes, even if this got back to “messier than pixel art” and kept me wondering whether there was something to “pre-selecting” palettes after all. All in all, though, the diversion’s stayed amusing.
In a moving-along mood, I happened on a comment about an updated version (with an essential bug fix) of a cross-platform emulator for the Z80-powered TRS-80 computers. Having had two TRS-80 emulators be left behind by advancing operating systems to reduce me to getting an emulator for Windows running via Wine, I do appreciate having come across this new program. When I checked the web site to download it again, though, this time I noticed a GIF viewer for the TRS-80 also offered, which amused me anew. For all the comments about the low resolution of the original Model I (where, once you’d got past commands in BASIC, you weren’t so much turning individual “blocks” on and off as replacing regular characters with two-by-three combinations of those blocks), high-resolution graphics options were eventually available for the later models in the line. Even if I had to use a Windows utility via Wine to make up more disk images, I was able to get a few images displayed in the emulator, and after starting with “1-bit” black and white experimented to discover the viewer had some ability of its own to dither colours into patterns. Then, looking up the exact screen resolution with a thought or two of making better-looking pictures, I noticed the name of a GIF viewer programmed in the first days of the format and the final days of the computer, and managed to find it via an online archive of software. With the screen-blurring effects built into the emulator’s fanciest display mode, the images could almost look grey-scaled.
All of this work with black-and-white dithering, though, had me wondering about a different black-and-white computer from the last years of the 1980s. Someone with a Macintosh II would have been well off so far as viewing GIF files went, but those computers were expensive machines, and I got to wondering if there were any programs for the merely pricy earlier Macs without “Color QuickDraw.” Some searching did turn up a few of them, which I worked into the Mini vMac emulator to discover they mostly seemed to use “Floyd-Steinberg” rather than “Atkinson” dithering and noted pictures sized for a Color Computer 3 only took up a small part of even the “compact Macintosh” screen. I did also manage to find a GIF viewer for the Apple II, in a way looping back to my earlier boiled-down images, and then another “old computer image simulator” for the iPad. I made its “in-app purchase” to try and set up Color Computer 3 screen modes, even if this got back to “messier than pixel art” and kept me wondering whether there was something to “pre-selecting” palettes after all. All in all, though, the diversion’s stayed amusing.