Does every video card have it's own font?
Maybe it's because I've been using Virge cards for so long, but when I went to test a STB Nitro 3D (Mpact-2) there was a slight difference with the font, especially numbers. I kinda prefer it, little more "high tech" looking. 🤣
Yes the font is copied from a rom to ram. Every card could have it's own charset in ROM and there are slight differences between graphics cards.
And you can load own charsets within DOS with fload f.e. (external tool).
So for 8x8 fonts you can convert f.e. fonts from C64 font collections for demos, which is a nearly unlimited resource 😀.
(req. petscii to ascii code conversion)
Retronn.de - Vintage Hardware Gallery, Drivers, Guides, Videos. Now with file search
Youtube Channel
FTP Server - Driver Archive and more
DVI2PCIe alignment and 2D image quality measurement tool
I got confused why my Tseng ET3000 had a different looking 0 than my onboard VGA back in the day...
Radeon 7x00 has a strange dos font too
I didn't even realize this. Thanks for pointing it out 😀
I had some fun back then on my 386/486 with fonts changing in DOS 😁
I always returned to the stock font though....
Fonts are indeed in the ROM BIOS of the video card. Since MS-DOS 3.3 you can replace or enhance the codepage 437 fonts, on older DOS you were pretty much stuck with these, at least in the DOS shell. WHile all cards could potentiall bring loads of awesome fonts they were all more or less a copy of IBM's original OEM fonts.
BTW - the ROM BIOS fonts only affect the boot loader up to WIndows ME. Since Windows 2000/NT the bootloader typically loads EGA.CPI - so your boot menu would lose the cool OEM font.
If you dont like the new font you can reflash your video ROM BIOS with some nicer font. Instructions here:
