Which font is used in MS-DOS?

Question

Does anyone know which is the font that the Windows console/MS-DOS uses?

Answer 1

Terminal

Answer 2

The one that I grew up with in the days of VGA is called "Code page 437"

The closest one I've seen is called "More Perfect DOS VGA"

It can be downloaded here: http://laemeur.sdf.org/fonts/

I've only found one discrepancy so far: the ` is a little different from 437.

Answer 3

MS-DOS and the Windows terminal are two different things.

MS-DOS uses the ROM font built into your hardware: the font is actually built into a ROM chip on the video card, and it's not part of the operating system at all. Those fonts are actually a set of bitmap images, and graphics cards would actually use different bitmaps for different display modes. Your graphics card can display that text, but only when Windows is not running.

The Windows terminal uses whatever font you pick. You can see the default font by opening a terminal (Command Prompt) and looking at the properties in the system menu (the icon in the upper-left corner of the window.)

In older versions of Windows, I believe that defaulted to a bitmap font named "Terminal", but that seems to have changed, and in the current version of Windows 10, it defaults to Courier New.

The difference is that Terminal is a raster font, and Courier New is a TrueType font. Raster fonts are actually stored as individual pixels and cannot scale to different sizes effectively. Instead, the font actually has different size versions in the font file, and the closest version is picked by the operating system when a specific size is requested. Extremely large text is not viable, and "in between" sizes must be approximated and usually look blocky and ugly.

Vector fonts (including PostScript, TrueType, and OpenType fonts) can scale to any size without losing quality. This is because the font is stored as lines and curves, rather than pixel data.

For a TrueType font that looks like the old VGA font, check out the Old School Font Pack at https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/readme/ or http://webdraft.hu/fonts/classic-console/

I'm writing a serial/Telnet terminal program, and I use the Classic Console font above to get back to that 80s DOS look. (The program will eventually run full screen - no menus or even mouse cursor. It's going to be legit old school.)

And just for fun, you should check out the Glass VT220 font: https://github.com/lalo/VT220-mod-font

Answer 4

The font used is attached here Its a low px font

Answer 5

Different version ( and locale) of MS-DOS use different font. Check it in MS-DOS Properties.

Answer 6

MS-DOS properties says Raster Fonts. There is also one more option called Lucida Console. No other font is available in Windows XP

Answer 7

You could write your own font for MS DOS. It was quite simple. I made one for my personal use that made the characters slightly larger in the "box".

Answer 8

You can try this one: TrueType font