Very insane IBM XT CGA demo.

[Thorham]

Very insane demo: [ Show youtube player ]

Watch the whole thing, it starts with some simple text which is not an indication of the rest of the demo. Audio in the credits part at the end is ridiculous and must be heard.

Enjoy

How the effects are done: http://trixter.oldskool.org/2015/04/...our-emulators/

Thanks for sharing that....simply incredible demo !

Who would have thought that was even possible ?
Well I best be off to read how it was done

[amiman99]

I did see that when I watched the full Old School Demo video, it was the last one, pretty impressive demo.

[Nosferax]

That is one sick demo. I raise my hat to those guy. Just the research work on how to get the 1k colours is phenomenal.

[Locutus]

Yes, pretty insanely awesome. Even if it did make my ears bleed at several points :>

[Higgy]

Excellent work. Talk about hitting the hardware!

[Etze]

Will this work on a KCS Power PC Board?

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by Etze

Will this work on a KCS Power PC Board?

Probably not. You need a CGA card with NTSC composite video output, or it won't look right.

[Locutus]

I bet you can be pretty damn sure its specific to the system timings of a 5150 :-)

[Mrs Beanbag]

wow.

i shudder to imagine what demo coders in 30 years time will be getting today's hardware to do.

[Nosferax]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

wow.

i shudder to imagine what demo coders in 30 years time will be getting today's hardware to do.

Not much since both nvidia and amd have locked down their hardware and refuse to release the tech documentation forcing you to only program through their published and limiting API.

This is also killing the alternate OS scene since all that they can do is program modern GPU as if they were old VESA gpu.

The only GPU maker that does publish, albeit indirectly, it's tech docs is intel with its integrated GPU.

[Mrs Beanbag]

...as if 1000 colours on CGA and tracker mods playing on internal beeper speaker is in IBM's tech docs anywhere

[Nosferax]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

...as if 1000 colours on CGA and tracker mods playing on internal beeper speaker is in IBM's tech docs anywhere

The composite signal is well documented as demonstrated by their research. All the hardware of that era was open since to take advantage of it you mostly had to use machine language. Today that isn't the case. You can only use OS dependant calls through closed source drivers and API to program gpus.

In the good old days you could feed your video card just about anything through a simple bios call.

[britelite]

Originally Posted by Nosferax

In the good old days you could feed your video card just about anything through a simple bios call.

Using bios calls was roughly the equivalent of using modern API's that you seem to dislike so much.

If you really wanted to get weird stuff done, you had to access the video card directly.

[Nosferax]

Originally Posted by britelite

Using bios calls was roughly the equivalent of using modern API's that you seem to dislike so much.

If you really wanted to get weird stuff done, you had to access the video card directly.

Which you can't do anymore... The point I was making. I visit OSDev regularly and I read how those attempting to write alternative operating system have to struggle to make graphic mode work on modern GPU. It is a pain in the... And most of the time they use the old VESA call and are limited to non accelerated 2D.

Even Linux has to work with closed source 2nd rate drivers since neither AMD or NVidia will open their cards architecture.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by Nosferax

Even Linux has to work with closed source 2nd rate drivers since neither AMD or NVidia will open their cards architecture.

How absurd

[Nosferax]

Originally Posted by Thorham

How absurd

That it is...

[britelite]

Originally Posted by Nosferax

Which you can't do anymore...

Of course you can, if you want your stuff to only work on that one specific card.

[s2325]

I think this wizard should play with other computer, not IBM PC.

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by Thorham

How absurd

History repeats itself: at the beginning Atari computers hardware specs (yup, those designed by Miner) were kept away from devs for the reason Time-Warner-corporate atari wanted computers to do serious work and so people had to reverse engineer them - that however reconnects with the Open Source All things topic, because THIS is exactly what would like to prevent to happen with open technologies (not necessarily progams) so also to keep machines alive beyond the lifespan and have a "plan B"