I recently had the opportunity to sit down in front of an old, original IBM PC 5150. The sight of the massive and already slightly yellowed housing, the full “clone” of the main switch, the hectic sawing of the floppy disk drive. Suddenly I was again and typed my first application into a computer with WordStar.

I didn’t get the job back then; the personnel managers at 1980 he were probably not progressive enough for needle-printed letters on continuous paper. But looking back it was a very special feeling: The letters in strong green on a dark background, the metallic clacking of the heavy keyboard; I felt professional and incredibly creative at the same time, I could have written several novels at once. So theoretically.

But wait! Writing has long since become my job. Why not type a c’t article into Wordstar in the old spirit and feeling? Just as George RR Martin is said to have done back then when he wrote his epic about dragons, wildlings and the struggle for a throne, deliberately disdaining the convenience of Windows, macOS and Word.

Brief rapture I’ll keep it short: I didn’t get very far. Wordstar 3.4 started without any problems from an almost 20 year old floppy disk and I even remembered a few of the cryptic key combinations. Yeah, it feels the same as it did back then. But the incredibly cumbersome operation and the rubbery sluggishness pulled my nerves very quickly.

WordStar runs in the DOSBox without any problems and also feels like back then. The fun is limited.

And the real problem was yet to come: Contemporary text programs save files in their very own format. And on diskette, stupidly also in the 5, 25 – inch format, the content of which I only show with large contortions a modern PC. I would have to because our final editorial team and the DTP department would be just as enthusiastic about the floppy disk as they would be from a paper printout. I seriously wonder how George RR Martin managed to do this with his publisher.

Even if I don’t use an old PC, but a DOS program in a virtual machine I would be spared the floppy disk, but not the incompatible file format. Only very few text programs (such as Euroscript) offered an optional plain text export at that time, but then as DOS-ASCII files. To ensure that umlauts and special characters are also retained, they would first have to be converted to ANSI, which Microsoft Word, for example, does quite well. The compatibility pack offered up to for Office 2007, which was also able to import original files from DOS-Word or WordStar, has long since been available from the download pages away; it would no longer run in the current Office versions anyway.

Retro-Modern No, typing around in an old DOS word processor may create a cozy feeling of transfigured retro romanticism for a short time but definitely no longer practicable.

This only applies to the software from back then. Anyone who does not long to go back to the outdated text programs, but would rather have the clear, structured display of the green characters on a dark background, without menus, symbols, scroll bars and other distracting fuss, can be helped. And on a modern computer, without any file format or transfer problems.

Distraction Free Writing is called very modern; There are plenty of suitable editors for current operating systems. And the light font on a dark background is also very popular. This so-called dark mode is offered by many programs.

An editor like FocusWriter with matching Fonts and colors tickle the retro nerve, but also fit into modern workflows.

What you need is a Distraction Free Editor that allows you to adapt the display so that it looks like a text program from the 1980 is as close as possible. The free FocusWriter works well.

The first thing to do is to set the editor to the correct colors. This can be done easily in FocusWriter under Settings / Designs. So set the window background to black and the text color to a pleasing green or orange (if you prefer the amber monitors) – done. Quite nice, but a little more retro is still possible. Not just any green or orange, an authentic shade is needed.

This article comes from c’t-RETRO. In the special edition of c’t we take a look back at the first IBM PCs and highlight the triumphant advance of Windows. You will find practice, tests and stories about classic technology. We remember Karl Klammer, present a modern IBM XT replica for vintage computing and explain how you can rescue data from scratched CDs and ancient hard drives. c’t RETRO is now available in the Heise Shop and at the well-stocked magazine kiosk.