[HN Gopher] Area 5150, a Reflection
___________________________________________________________________
Area 5150, a Reflection
Author : zdw
Score : 61 points
Date : 2022-11-13 15:15 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (scalibq.wordpress.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (scalibq.wordpress.com)
| tyingq wrote:
| Maybe no explanation needed here, but just in case, "5150" was
| the iconic first IBM PC:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer
| zen21 wrote:
| Amusingly the same number as for the legal code used to
| involuntarily detain someone for psychiatric evaluation.
| jll29 wrote:
| The pun about "Area 5150" is int includes "area 51" (a US
| military base where, besides new weapons testing, according to
| conspiracy theories, aliens may also be investigated or kept -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_51) and "IBM 5150" combined.
|
| The pun about "8088 MPH" is the "Intel 8088" was used an "MPH"
| obviously stands for "miles per hour", a rather fast pace.
|
| In some sense, the audience for these demos is small, because to
| be truly appreciative of the technical skill of the demo coders,
| you probably should have programmed the IBM PC (and its various
| graphics modes) in assembler.
| sp332 wrote:
| 88 MPH is a Back to the Future reference. "When this baby hits
| 88mph, you're gonna see some serious shit!" And there's a
| Delorean in the "we don't need sprites" section.
| aliqot wrote:
| It's sad that they got rid of the enhanced timekeeping
| functionality in the move from 5100 to the (as I understand it,
| inferior) IBM 5150 model, which ships chrono-locked from
| factory to the present time at all times. Bummer!
| moosedev wrote:
| > The pun about "8088 MPH" is the "Intel 8088" was used an
| "MPH" obviously stands for "miles per hour", a rather fast
| pace.
|
| It's also a Back To The Future (1985) reference! (The Delorean
| had to reach 88mph in order to time travel.) It captures the
| "new demo for a 1980s computer" situation on several levels.
| aenis wrote:
| Lots of very same tricks that were used on 8bit computers -
| changing screen border offsets per scanline to generate smooth
| sinus-scroll like effects without moving any pixels in the
| memory, altering color palettes mid-refresh, faking graphics with
| fonts and animation with palette shifting - all prime tools in
| the 1980s. Masterpiece, no doubt. I'd be so cool to see the
| source!
| fortran77 wrote:
| You wonder how much better computing would be for any generation
| of CPU and display technology if people just spent the time and
| effort squeezing out every last drop of performance? How much
| energy and resources are we wasting because few people are
| programming or understanding their computers at the lowest level?
| II2II wrote:
| We can gain some insight by looking to the past. Certain
| generations of CPU were considerably longer lived than others.
| Think back to the 6502, Z80, 68000, or even the 8088. Even
| though the pace of progress was crazy back then, some of those
| CPUs were long lived because they formed the basis of budget
| computers. Some found a second life in other types of devices.
|
| While software improved, it never seemed as dramatic for
| applications than it did for games and never as dramatic for
| games as it was for demos. Applications were bumping into hard
| limits with respect to both computational power and memory. It
| frequently meant that one had to purchase an expensive
| workstation simply to get work done. Our computers may feel
| slow at times, but they can usually do what we expect of them
| without the expense of specialized hardware.
|
| Why are demos the exception? Part of it will have to do with
| maintainability and support. No one is going to worry about
| updates to a demo a year down the road, never mind ten years.
| Likewise, no one is going to care if it fails to run on some
| computers due to some obscure edge case. Demos can also afford
| to make trade-offs. Few, if any, demos require user
| interaction. They don't have to concern themselves with
| background processes. From start to end, they are
| deterministic. Things that would be truly bizarre in
| application development, such as tying up the CPU to get
| precise timing to play tricks with the video card then using
| deterministic code paths to get that precise timing, are
| acceptable with demos.
| thanatos519 wrote:
| Those CGA textmode graphics modes are fun. I once wrote a fractal
| zoomer that worked at 160x100 16c or 80x100 ... many colours,
| depending on which dither characters I used.
|
| Glad to see someone driving the technique to the extreme!
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-11-13 23:00 UTC)