1977
Retro text-mode ASCII art
Only for Mac
$1.99
Mac
Convert any image to authentic text-mode ASCII art for ten classic computers — Apple II, Commodore, Atari, ZX Spectrum, Amiga, MS-DOS — with native fonts and palettes.
1977 turns any photo into authentic text-mode ASCII art the way it would have looked on a real classic computer — in the original font, the original screen aspect, and the original colour palette.
CHOOSE A PLATFORM
• Apple II (40-col / 80-col)
• Commodore PET, 64, 128 (80-col), VIC-20
• Atari 8-bit, Atari ST
• ZX Spectrum
• Amiga
• MS-DOS (CGA)
Each platform draws on its real bundled font — Print Char 21, PR Number 3, Pet Me 64 / 2X / 128 2Y, EightBit Atari, Atari ST 8x16, ZX Spectrum, Amiga Topaz, Perfect DOS VGA 437 — and its real hardware palette. Phosphor systems (Apple II, PET) get a green / amber / white radio; colour-capable systems get full foreground/background swatch pickers using the actual hardware colours.
KEY FEATURES
• Live crop tool — drag, resize (aspect locked to the platform), pinch-zoom, two-finger pan; the converter re-runs as you drag.
• Character picker popover — every glyph in the platform's font in a scrollable grid; click to build your own custom ramp from blocks, PETSCII, Mousetext, box-drawing, or anything else.
• Per-platform colour memory — switch platforms and your customised foreground/background for each is restored.
• Built-in ramps: Apple II Classic, Standard ASCII, Simple, Dense, PETSCII Blocks, PETSCII Symbols, CP437 Blocks — plus your own custom ramp.
• Brightness, contrast, invert, horizontal/vertical flip — all live.
• Optional retro UI themes for the surrounding app window (Apple II green-CRT, Apple IIgs amber, C64 blue, VIC-20 cyan, MS-DOS).
• Drag-and-drop any PNG, JPEG, TIFF, GIF, BMP or HEIC.
EXPORT
• PNG at 1×, 2× or 4× the platform's native resolution — rendered with your chosen font and colours.
• Apple II ProDOS disk image (.po) — a bootable disk with a STARTUP launcher that runs the art on a real Apple II or in any emulator.
• Apple II text (.txt with CR endings, 7-bit ASCII) — drop on a ProDOS disk and TYPE.
• Mac text (.txt, LF endings).
• Applesoft BASIC program (.bas) — auto-inserts PR# 3 for 80-col output.
Named for the year the Apple II shipped. macOS native, written in SwiftUI.
Ratings & Reviews
- This app hasn’t received enough ratings or reviews to display an overview.
What's new in 1977 1.5
NEW: Movie to Apple II
• Turn any MP4 or MOV into a bootable Apple II disk that plays your video on real hardware or in an emulator.
• Four modes: 40-column text, 80-column text, 40-column color (LORES) and 80-column color (Double-LORES). Put several on one disk and pick from a menu at boot.
• Choose 140 KB or 800 KB floppy images, or a 32 MB hard-disk image (.2mg / .hdv).
• Playback speeds from 1 to 8 frames per second.
• The app shows exactly how many frames fit on your chosen disk.
Easier to use
• Toolbar buttons are now larger, with a name under each icon: Import, Convert Movie, Copy and Export.
Fixes and improvements
• Exported video disks now loop or return to the menu when playback ends, instead of stopping.
• The screen no longer flashes stripes or garbled characters when a video starts or ends.
• Slow frame rates (1 and 2 fps) now play at the right speed.
• Exporting at the maximum frame count for a disk no longer fails, and large 32 MB disks export in about a second instead of minutes.
• Exporting an image to a disk now respects your crop.
• Apple II exports no longer break when the character set includes block or other non-ASCII characters. They are replaced with spaces.
• Disk timestamps are now correct.
The developer, Walter Tengler, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- Walter Tengler
- Size
- 3.4 MB
- Category
- Utilities
- Compatibility
Requires macOS 14.0 or later.
- Mac
Requires macOS 14.0 or later.
- Mac
- Languages
- English
- Age Rating
4+
- 4+
- Copyright
- © 2026 Walter Tengler

