1977

The year the Apple II shipped.

A native macOS app that converts any image into authentic text-mode ASCII art for fifteen classic platforms — from the Apple II to the Amiga — with live previews using each system's real fonts, hardware palettes, and screen aspect.

Output can be saved as a PNG, a bootable ProDOS disk image, plain text ready to TYPE on a real Apple II, or a runnable Applesoft BASIC program.

Supported platforms

Platform	Grid	Font
Apple II (40-col)	40 × 24	Print Char 21
Apple II (80-col)	80 × 24	PR Number 3
Commodore PET	40 × 25	Pet Me 64
Commodore 64	40 × 25	Pet Me 64
Commodore 128 (80-col)	80 × 25	Pet Me 128 2Y
VIC-20	22 × 23	Pet Me 2X
Atari 8-bit	40 × 24	EightBit Atari
Atari ST	80 × 25	Atari ST 8x16
ZX Spectrum	32 × 24	ZX Spectrum
Amiga	80 × 25	Amiga Topaz
MS-DOS (CGA)	80 × 25	Perfect DOS VGA 437
Amstrad CPC	40 × 25	Amstrad CPC464
TRS-80 CoCo	32 × 16	Hot CoCo
MSX (40-col)	40 × 24	MSX Screen 0
MSX (32-col)	32 × 24	MSX Screen 1

Each platform draws on its native screen aspect ratio (e.g. 280 × 192 for Apple II, 320 × 200 for Commodore, 640 × 400 for Amiga / Atari ST / MS-DOS) and its own colour model — phosphor for monochrome systems, hardware palette for the rest.

Screenshots

Apple II 80-col · character picker popover	Atari ST · live crop tool

Commodore 128 (80-col) · custom ramp	Amiga · Workbench palette · Dense ramp

MS-DOS · CGA palette · Apple II Blocks ramp	Apple II 80-col · 48 rows (2 screens)

Atari ST · inverted Simple ramp	Commodore 128 · C64 retro UI theme

Features

• Fifteen retro platforms with native fonts, palettes, and aspect ratios.
• One screen or two — native row count, or 2× for double-screen output.
• Character ramps — Apple II Classic, Standard ASCII, Simple, Dense, PETSCII Blocks, PETSCII Symbols, CP437 Blocks, plus a custom ramp.
• Character picker popover — every glyph in the platform's font in a scrollable grid; click to build your custom ramp.
• Live crop tool — draggable, resizable selection box with locked aspect ratio, rule-of-thirds grid, pinch-zoom, two-finger pan, and mouse-wheel zoom.
• Per-platform colour memory — phosphor systems get a green / amber / white radio, palette systems get full FG/BG swatch pickers (16 colours for C64/C128/VIC-20/CGA/Atari, 8 for Spectrum/Amiga). Your last selection per platform is remembered.
• Brightness, contrast, invert with live preview (debounced 150 ms).
• Horizontal and vertical flip.
• Aspect-ratio-correct sampling — input images are mapped onto each platform's display canvas using BT.709 perceptual luminance.
• Drag-and-drop import for PNG, JPEG, TIFF, GIF, BMP, HEIC.
• Export formats:
  • PNG at 1×, 2×, or 4× the platform's native resolution.
  • Apple II Disk Image (.po) — bootable ProDOS disk with a STARTUP launcher and both 40-col and 80-col renderings.
  • Apple II Text (.txt, 7-bit ASCII, CR / 0x0D line endings) — drop onto a ProDOS disk and TYPE it.
  • Mac Text (.txt, LF endings) — for editing on the Mac.
  • Applesoft BASIC (.bas, PRINT program) — auto-inserts PR# 3 for 80-column output.

Export options

Apple II disk creation

Picking Apple II Disk Image writes a bootable ProDOS volume containing six programs and a STARTUP launcher. Boot it on real hardware or any Apple II emulator and you'll land on this menu:

Each disk carries:

• ART40 / ART80 — slow PRINT-based programs (one statement per row) you can LIST and read.
• LOADER40 / LOADER80 — fast versions: a small embedded 6502 ML routine BLOADs the screen-memory dump straight to text page 1 and (for 80-col) bank-switches into AUX RAM via PAGE2.
• ART40.BIN / ART80.BIN — raw screen-memory dumps the loaders BLOAD.
• STARTUP — auto-runs at boot, shows the picker, smart-RUNs the chosen program with PRINT CHR$(4);"-FILENAME".

Movie → Apple II video

Drop an MP4 or MOV into the Video window and 1977 streams every frame through the same ASCII / LORES converter, then writes a bootable ProDOS disk that plays the video back on real Apple II / IIgs hardware. Four output modes ship on one disk — 40-col text, 80-col text, 40-col LORES color, 80-col Double-LORES color — with a built-in 6502 ML player that streams frames from disk into text-page 1 in real time.

• Disk formats — 140 KB or 800 KB floppy (.po), or a 32 MB hard-disk image (.2mg / .hdv). The Disk Info panel shows how many frames fit; the limit is computed from the exact size of the ProDOS system files and players, so an export at the stated maximum always succeeds. A single frames file is capped at ProDOS's 16 MB file limit.
• Frame rate — 1, 2, 4, 6 or 8 fps. The player paces playback with a calibrated delay on top of the disk read time, so the slow rates (1 and 2 fps) run at the chosen speed; faster rates are limited by how quickly the disk can stream frames.
• Character ramps — only ramps made of plain ASCII are offered, since the Apple II character ROM can't show Unicode blocks or PETSCII glyphs. In the image converter, any such characters in an Apple II export are written as spaces.

Same frame playing back on Apple IIgs hardware — 80-col Double-LORES streamed from the ProDOS disk by the bundled 6502 ML player.

Requirements

• macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later
• Xcode 16 or later

Build & run

git clone https://github.com/portwally/1977.git
cd 1977
open AppleIIASCIIArt.xcodeproj

Then press ⌘R in Xcode.

Or build from the command line:

xcodebuild -project AppleIIASCIIArt.xcodeproj -scheme AppleIIASCIIArt -configuration Release build

How it works

1. The source image is cropped to the selection rect (or the largest centred AR-matched rect if you haven't moved it), then aspect-fill scaled into the chosen platform's display canvas.
2. The canvas is downsampled to a cols × rows bitmap — one pixel per character cell.
3. Per-cell brightness is computed via BT.709 luminance (0.2126 R + 0.7152 G + 0.0722 B) after applying brightness/contrast adjustments.
4. The 0.0 → 1.0 brightness value indexes into the chosen character ramp (dark → light).
5. The grid is rendered live in the platform's font, at the platform's foreground / background colour, with optional flips and inversion.

Fonts

Bundled retro fonts:

• Print Char 21, PR Number 3 — Apple II / IIgs by Kreative Korporation
• Pet Me 64, Pet Me 2X, Pet Me 128 2Y — Commodore PET / 64 / 128 / VIC-20 by Style
• Perfect DOS VGA 437 — by Zeh Fernando
• EightBit Atari — Atari 8-bit
• ZX Spectrum — by Damien Guard
• Amiga Topaz — Commodore Amiga
• Atari ST 8x16 System Font — Atari ST
• Amstrad CPC464 — Amstrad CPC
• Hot CoCo — TRS-80 Color Computer
• MSX Screen 0, MSX Screen 1 — MSX 40-col / 32-col

Each font retains its original license; see in-app About / Credits for details.

License

Code: see repository. Fonts retain their original licenses.