On Tue, 23 May 2000, Vintage Computer GAWD! wrote:
> I am making the assumption that most of these ASCII art files were scanned
> from actual pictures and then rendered by some software?
>
> If so, is this software still around??? And what hardware was used to
> scan them?
Well... I don't know about the 'official' methods (if there ever were
such a thing), but one that I witnessed some many years ago over at
Tektronix involved a large flat-bed plotter with a lamp/photocell
combination mounted in a plotter-pen casing which was scanned across the
target original in a 'raster-scan' mode. (left to right, return to left
margin, drop down a specified distance, repeat)
IIRC values from 0 to 64 (or was it 32?) were read from the photocell via
a D/A circuit, and print lines were generated from a table of overprinted
characters based on the values.
Once upon a time, (and perhaps still buried in the archive somewhere) I
had a copy of the character reference chart which showed the value, the
final printed character cell, and the characters which made it up. (in the
order that they should be printed... The source of many lively debates!)
Spew forth into a print (text) file, load up some boxes of paper and a
fresh ribbon, and yer off!
-jim
---
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Received on Tue May 23 2000 - 15:09:35 BST