Ascii or even asterisk art?

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NovellNetware's picture
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Ascii or even asterisk art?

Back in they day I know about ascii art or even art with asterisk on a type writter. I was thinking hey. i got a Apple II plus with a oki 82a dot matrix printer. I should be able to print something up. But I can't find anything really related to it. Thiking a simple basic program or something. But all I can find is old minicomputers and mainframe data. Though, I'm not a programmer so I can't really convert it. But if somebody could point me in the correct direction. On a side note. I can hook up the printer to my windezs 10 machine and print using the generic / text printer driver too.

 

Thanks For Any help,

 

Josh

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With the II Plus in low res

With the II Plus in low res text mode, a crude "text/ASCII art" is pretty much all you can do indeed.

In Applesoft BASIC you can use VTAB and HTAB to place the cursor and PRINT to display a character.

You can find a table with the character set here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II_character_set

 

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I have a couple of applesoft

I have a couple of applesoft basic programs which prints ascii art to a matrix printer.

I would like to post them here, but I'm not sure how to get them from a 5.25" floppy to here.

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tolderlund wrote:I have a
tolderlund wrote:

I have a couple of applesoft basic programs which prints ascii art to a matrix printer.

I would like to post them here, but I'm not sure how to get them from a 5.25" floppy to here.

You would need to image them somehow, assuming you still have a working Apple II. Two of the most common ways are by transferring the images via serial port using ADTPro software, or copying them to a floppy image using a floppy emulator like the FloppyEmu. And there is the hard way, retype them in an Apple II emulator and save the floppy image. 

 

If you don't have a working A2 anymore, then you could send the floppies to someone to image. You may even find someone local to you.

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I have a working A2

I have an Apple II europlus and an Apple IIc, both working.

What I need is a serial cable, though I may just have one somewhere if I can find it.

 

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Most (if not all) modern PCs

Most (if not all) modern PCs today lack a serial port. So you'll need a USB to serial converter cable as well. The ADTPro site links to a site that everything you'll need at reasonable prices. Including a null (or straight through if using a SSC card and can change the pinout) modem cable if you can't find yours.

 

https://retrofloppy.com/products/

 

 

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Problem is retrofloppy do not

Problem is retrofloppy do not ship outside US.

I have now ordered a few parts so that I can make a cable myself.

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You could cheat and use an

You could cheat and use an ASCII art utility like this:

https://manytools.org/hacker-tools/convert-images-to-ascii-art/

and this:

https://patorjk.com/software/taag/#p=display&f=Graffiti&t=Type%20Something%20

 

To get it into your Apple II the way I do it is first run a word processing or text editor in AppleWin or Virtual II.  I like the one embedded in ProTerm v3.1.

AppelWin  

Virtual II

You can copy from Mac/Windows and paste into Virtual II/AppleWin.  Then save the file to a disk image.

Then transfer that disk image to your Apple II using either a disk image reader like a CFFA3000, KBooHK Drive, SDISK-II, or Booti-HD card.

Or transfer it to a physical floppy via ADTPro.

 

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I saw the first one.

I saw the first one but did not do that yet. I was thinking more of taking old ascii art programming. But as I found out. It is on certain languages. Like I think one was in fortran.

 

Anyway great ideas. Ran out of time this weekend. But I'll get back to it.

 

Thanks,

 

Josh

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The ascii art which I have is

The ascii art which I have is made in applesoft basic, meant for printing.

As soon as I get the serial cable I will post the program here.

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DSK file with ascii art

I have uploaded a DSK file with several applesoft programs which print ascii art.

Use ADTPro to transfer the DSK file or whatever method you have available.

The DSK contains DOS3.3 and several Applesoft program which prints ascii art to the printer.

ASCII art DSK

 

Enjoy!

 

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You may want to take a look

You may want to take a look at this ASCII art editor too from Brutal Deluxe:

http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/products/apple2/t40.html

 

and Krue's website showing off some ASCII art generated using this utility:

http://krue.net/fortycolumns/

 

Cheers,

Mike

 

 

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I got a chance to get my printer plugged back in.

Due to space limitation. I got my printer temp plugged back in for a while. But I didn't realize some more replies was added to this question. Once again thanks for this. But, the asciiart.zip is not available anymore.

 

Thanks,

 

Josh

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asciiart

I don't know what happened to it.

Here it is again I hope:

Package iconASCIIART.zip

 

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Well, it works and contains

Well, it works and contains everything you'd expect: an Alfred E. Neumann graphic, a map of Denmark, ASCII art of Mercator (16th century Dutch cartographer), of Pluto the dog - and pinups of Brigit Bardot... :-) Some programs seem incomplete/corrupt though.

When using a sim, you can also view the ASCII art by printing to a text file and then reducing the font size until the characters are barely recognizable. The quality of the ASCII art is actually quite impressive. (I'm purely refering to the technical aspect of the font dithering effect here! :-)) )

 

 

 

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..and did you know

     asterisk art or ASCII art pre-dates computers and goes back to the old teletype days.  Teletype machines  were essentially automated typewriters that could receive data either over a phone connection that converted audio tones to ASCII data, or through long distance radio transmissions.  Ham radio operators (our computer forefathers) interconnected teletype machines, often with punch tape reader and writer add-ons, to their ham radio station equipment setups to send ASCII art to one another. 

 

btw: I'm an old CNE 3 & 4

 

 

 

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ASCII most certainly does not

ASCII most certainly does not predate computers: the draft version was published in 1961 and the final standard is from 1968.

Early teletypewriters used a number of five-bit codes commonly called "Baudot", typically with numbers-shift and symbols-shift codepoints. Only uppercase was used. The electrical signal was a 0-60 mA current loop, so you could have connected a sender and receiver over a leased line; but beginning in the 1930s, the Telex network allowed transmissions to be addressed to any of thousands of printers around the world.

 

Here is an archive of "RTTY art"; most of them from the 1970s, but it says some examples date from the 1940s.

http://artscene.textfiles.com/rtty/

An RTTY is a radio teletype using a FSK modem typically in a separate unit, connected to the teletype using current loop.

 

RS-232 serial communication is from the computer era too, first defined in 1960.

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LaserMaster wrote:     btw: I
LaserMaster wrote:

     btw: I'm an old CNE 3 & 4

What's a CNE 3&4?

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I think he means CNE =

I think he means CNE = Certified Netware Engineer.

 

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