Eniac by Lightning Technologies
Welcome to my first demo called
--------------------------------> E N I A C <----------------------------------
This is my first demo, so, as usual, please allow it not to be perfect! So
this demo was written for a little competition we had on a private board,
to recrute some programmers. The conditions were a VGA demo, written by one
or more programmers. In fact, the only condition was that it had to be a
VGA demo. So, when I decided to enter the contest, I of course did it to
compete with the others, but also to build myself some graphic librairies I
could use for some other demo/program later. So, I enter the world of low
level VGA programming and so on. But first, for those of you that can't
wait more, here are the requirements for this demo:
- a 386DX 25Mhz or more. You might want to try it on slower machines,
but I don't know how good it will be. Please note that it was coded
on a 386DX, and tested on the following machines : 486DX2 50Mhz,
486DX 50Mhz.
- 580'000 bytes of free memory. This is usually not to difficult to
obtain, especially if you're running under DOS 5. I also recommend
that you avoid using EMM drivers (EMM386, HIMEM, QEMM-386, BLUEMAX,
and so on). Note that some machines will not run the demo correctly
WITHOUT that driver, so, try it without and with...
- OPTIONAL : A Soundblaster card. Although it is optional, it is
STRONGLY recommended. I do not know if the demo will run with
Thunderboard or PAS-16 cards, but just try it... By the way, the
4 channel digital music is played back using the STMIK 0.2 written
by Sami Tammilehto. An excellent piece of code which all of you
with a SoundBlaster card should try out...
- Patience. If you are patient enough to wait and sit back to watch
the demo, you will be rewarded after a few introduction sentences.
Some people told me that the text is too long, but I had a lot to
say, especially greetings, tech stuff...
Now, for those of you that are patient enough to read on, here are a few
more words about the demo. It is written, as I said, using the low level
stuff of the VGA card. Most of the demo coders know that, but others still
ignore it, there is much more than you think in a 256k VGA card. For
example, by reprogramming the VGA controller, one can achieve up to
360x480x256 resolution... Which is much nicer than IBM's 320x200x256 mode.
So, the demo is in 320x240x256, and if I decide to go on with this demo
stuff, I may start to explore new resolutions like 320x400x256 (very easy
to set up!)... Also, for those of you with home made DACs, I am currently
working on my own 4 channel digital player that will support the SoundBlaster
and those DAC (Stereo-On-One included) and I might, if I get the technical
descriptions include support for SoundBlaster Pro, PAS-16, and maybe others.
But all this may take time, since I am writing all the stuff alone...
At last, please spread this demo ! Thanks for reading this and enjoy the
demo!!!
Serge Huber.
HOW TO CONTACT ME
-----------------
I am very sorry, but I am a little difficult to reach, so, since I have
no FidoNet point or Internet address, the easiest way is to write to the
following address:
Serge Huber
Ch. de la Tire, 6
1261 Chavannes-de-Bogis, VD
Switzerland
[ back to the prod ]