As I have a taste for retrocomputing, here are some images you can use to create text displays from days of yore.

Retro pbmtext fonts

About pbmtext

pbmtext is part of the NetPBM toolkit. It creates graphical images of text strings in a user-defined monospaced font. The built-in font is a bit cheesy, so I've put together a collection here, gleaned from old computers.

The font images

Amstrad CPC Amstrad CPC

Sinclair ZX Spectrum Sinclair ZX Spectrum

IBM VGA IBM VGA
[does anyone really still use this? . . . :-)]

Old Amiga Old Amiga (up to Workbench 1.3)

Newer Amiga Newer Amiga (Workbench 2.0 on)

Sun Login Sun login screen

Small Atari/GEM Small Atari/GEM

Medium Atari/GEM Medium Atari/GEM

Large Atari/GEM Large Atari/GEM

How to use the font images

  1. Save the image.
  2. Convert it to PBM format.
  3. Create your image like this:

    pbmtext -font pbmtext_zx.pbm 'Happy pbmtext-ing!' > image.pbm
Happy pbmtext-ing!
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Stewart C. Russell, Kirkintilloch, Scotland