nice 😀

but please build an enclosure around your UV-C lamp, this is giving me the jeebies

Thanks!

The enclosure is on my TODO list. Also I want to source an electromagnetic ballast instead of the pure resistive one (made of light bulbs).
I took the pictures remotely (with timer) with the camera on a small tripod.

Needless to say, UV-C causes permanent blindness.

A.

yeah, I read the page, but still, all it takes is a little mistake ^^

I only got one of those cheap chinese UV EPROM erasers myself, 250W does seem a bit overkill anyhow x3

I'm curious: Was there a specific reason not to use customized loadable CPI fonts via mode command?
That's the approach I used years ago.

Hey, and pretty cool to see that you ended up making 8-dot versions of your fonts too (to go by the images on your page, anyway).

Still gotta fix that silly bug in Fontraption with ET4000 cards, but the update may be growing to include a couple of minor functionality additions as well.

Hi VileR,

Yes, in the end I hand-crafted all the fonts in the ROM. I did 8 x 8, 8 x 14, 9 x 14, 8 x 16, and 9 x 16 (exactly the ones in the updated pictures on my site).
Then I embedded all in the modified ROM image.

Thanks again for Fontraption! Looking forward for the fixed (and updated) version. I'm sure there is a way to bypass the Tseng Labs ROM text-mode rendering weirdness. Or maybe we can debug the ROM image and patch the Tseng Labs microcode itself.
That would take some time but would be interesting. Unfortunately I am way too busy now with my other hardware projects (can't wait to finish the sound card that I'm working on at the moment).

Benedikt, I used that method for some time back in the 90s. Lately I've been using FONTEDIT and even lately Fontraption to make executable .COM files that would load my custom fonts at AUTOEXEC.BAT runtime. But then I decided to jump to next step, while freeing up 4K in the conventional memory space or in the UMA (via EMM386), used by the font replacement TSR program. That is how I ended up modifying the ROM BIOS itself.

A.

ALEKS wrote on 2020-07-17, 12:57:

I used that method for some time back in the 90s. Lately I've been using FONTEDIT and even lately Fontraption to make executable .COM files that would load my custom fonts at AUTOEXEC.BAT runtime. But then I decided to jump to next step, while freeing up 4K in the UMA, used by the font replacement TSR program. That is how I ended up modifying the ROM BIOS itself.

Ah, I see! So it's been a natural evolution to the next logical step. Maybe I should dig up my custom fonts some time and try something similar.

ALEKS wrote on 2020-07-17, 12:57:

Thanks again for Fontraption! Looking forward for the fixed (and updated) version. I'm sure there is a way to bypass the Tseng Labs ROM text-mode rendering weirdness. Or maybe we can debug the ROM image and patch the Tseng Labs microcode itself.
That would take some time but would be interesting. Unfortunately I am way too busy now with my other hardware projects (can't wait to finish the sound card that I'm working on at the moment).

It seems like the rendering side is fine- the thing is that to create those fonts, I first read them from the VGA then modify them with various UI bits. The reading part seems to be the problem... after I read a couple of fonts, somehow the ET4000 ends up with the wrong active block, and sends the 8x8 font where the code is expecting 8x16.

Shouldn't be a difficult fix when I get the time, but I shouldn't hijack this thread 😀 hopefully soon I'll be able to post an updated version and let you know.