286/386/486 Demoscene
category: general [glöplog]
Actually an addon called Sega 32X was made later for that system which supported 32 bit. I could have chosen another system to make my point more clear... its late here now anyways. i should stop fucking around the web late at night.
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Nevertheless, 8088+VGA+AdLib is a realistic platform for late 80s.
Oh gosh, no. 8088 is slow enough without trying to sling around 4x more memory (than CGA) to support 256-color graphics. And Adlib requires so many waits between port writes that there is very little CPU time left over to do anything. This was never a game target in the 1980s. Most people who put a VGA card into an 8088 system was not gaming with it, they needed it for autocad or something.
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But I personally think that stock 8088+CGA/Hercules and speaker or stock PCjr/Tandy are more interesting platforms to explore.
Yes, and much more common. The only downside to 8088+CGA stock is the audio, where even a marginal increase in quality above BEEP results in drastically less CPU time left over to do anything.
...which kind of proves my point. ;) So I guess you're coding for Tandy then?
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Oh gosh, no. 8088 is slow enough without trying to sling around 4x more memory (than CGA) to support 256-color graphics.
I disagree. The 9.54 MHz 8088 was reasonably good with VGA. VGA also makes some things considerably faster than CGA because of the more advanced ALU, hardware scrolling and all that.
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And Adlib requires so many waits between port writes that there is very little CPU time left over to do anything.
Yes, but the same goes for playing high-quality digital sound on PC speaker (or C64 SID for that matter). It's still doable to have demo parts that focus mostly on sound.
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Most people who put a VGA card into an 8088 system was not gaming with it, they needed it for autocad or something.
Not at all my experience. 8088 at 9.54 MHz with VGA was reasonably common as a gaming system among my friends. Worked nicely for games like F29 Retaliator, Commander Keen, and adventure games such as Monkey Island, Larry, Space Quest etc.
I specifically upgraded to VGA for gaming at least. The PC wasn't really used for anything else that required graphics (dBase, WordPerfect...).
So you had 8088+VGA+Adlib??? What year was this?
I had an 8088 at 9.54 MHz (Commodore PC10-III), a Paradise VGA card and a joystick card.
This was probably somewhere between 1988 and 1992.
I could have added an AdLib card theoretically, but well, then Wolfenstein 3D came out, and getting a 286 or better CPU was more important than getting a sound card :)
Which is why I said it would be a 'realistic' platform... as in, people could actually have owned such a system, and it would actually have worked.
8088 with VGA was quite common at any rate.
I played quite a few games on that machine. Prince of Persia was another one I played a lot, in VGA, and Xenon II. And also various games in EGA, such as the earlier Sierra adventures, Test Drive I/II etc (hardly anyone ever had an EGA card, prices for EGA cards and monitors were very high, prices didn't go down until VGA was widespread, so nearly everyone went straight for VGA).
This was probably somewhere between 1988 and 1992.
I could have added an AdLib card theoretically, but well, then Wolfenstein 3D came out, and getting a 286 or better CPU was more important than getting a sound card :)
Which is why I said it would be a 'realistic' platform... as in, people could actually have owned such a system, and it would actually have worked.
8088 with VGA was quite common at any rate.
I played quite a few games on that machine. Prince of Persia was another one I played a lot, in VGA, and Xenon II. And also various games in EGA, such as the earlier Sierra adventures, Test Drive I/II etc (hardly anyone ever had an EGA card, prices for EGA cards and monitors were very high, prices didn't go down until VGA was widespread, so nearly everyone went straight for VGA).
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hardly anyone ever had an EGA card
I hade an EGA-card in both my V20 PC and 286. And several others had EGA here, too.
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And several others had EGA here, too.
Same here: 8088 + EGA with monochrome monitor (Atari PC3).
Must have been around 1989.
VGA screens were rather expensive at that time.
Scali: yes you "could have" added an Adlib, but you didn't. That is one more confirmation to what I think. 8088+VGA+Adlib was theoretically possible, but if someone actually had such a system before the 1990s, they were few and far between. If you accept "people COULD have built such a system" as your platform criteria, then just about any weird unbalanced contraption goes. People COULD have bought an Amiga. They SHOULD have. Instead, they used crap PCs that generally didn't even have sound facilities, until the 1990s. Tandy PCs are an exception. But no VGA. 8088+VGA+Adlib is more of an imaginary made-up thing. Like for example, if you were writing a historically accurate movie of a PC gamer from the 1980s, you would not have an 8088+VGA+Adlib there. You would have 8088+CGA+PC speaker.
In the beginning of the 1990s, if you had money for an 8086/8088 PC _and_ VGA _and_ sound card, then you really actually bought a 286 or 386 system instead.
In the beginning of the 1990s, if you had money for an 8086/8088 PC _and_ VGA _and_ sound card, then you really actually bought a 286 or 386 system instead.
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I hade an EGA-card in both my V20 PC and 286. And several others had EGA here, too.
Yes, I didn't say *nobody* had EGA. Two of my friends had EGA as well.
But everyone else had either CGA/Hercules or VGA, far outweighing the EGA installations.
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8088+VGA+Adlib was theoretically possible, but if someone actually had such a system before the 1990s, they were few and far between.
I never claimed otherwise.
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In the beginning of the 1990s, if you had money for an 8086/8088 PC _and_ VGA _and_ sound card, then you really actually bought a 286 or 386 system instead.
That's what I said.
Ok, we agree on the facts. But my conlusion is that 8088+CGA+Adlib is a nonsensical target. Actually, 8088 is, because unless you're specifically targeting Tandy computers or something, then it means that you don't have sound. Oh, Covox? Just as nonsensical. If you want VGA and reasonable sound, then the CPU is at least 286.
If I compare this to, say, Amiga AGA+060 turbo, or MSX turboR + Moonsound/OPL4, then who cares about historical accuracy, because those are actually existing current platforms today. There are people out there, Amiga and MSX hobbyists, with working setups that they use.
If I compare this to, say, Amiga AGA+060 turbo, or MSX turboR + Moonsound/OPL4, then who cares about historical accuracy, because those are actually existing current platforms today. There are people out there, Amiga and MSX hobbyists, with working setups that they use.
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But my conlusion is that 8088+CGA+Adlib is a nonsensical target.
That is up to everyone to decide for themselves. Quite a few wild demos are made on very strange/esoteric/whatever platforms just BECAUSE they are so nonsensical.
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Actually, 8088 is, because unless you're specifically targeting Tandy computers or something, then it means that you don't have sound.
There's always PC speaker. Trixter's MONOTONE is an interesting tracker that can get quite decent multiplexed sound from the PC speaker at very low CPU usage.
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If you want VGA and reasonable sound, then the CPU is at least 286.
As I already said, VGA is actually faster than CGA for many things, and quite a realistic target for 8088. Check out F29 Retaliator, has a very impressive 3d renderer which is very playable on an 8088 9.54 MHz in VGA.
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If I compare this to, say, Amiga AGA+060 turbo, or MSX turboR + Moonsound/OPL4, then who cares about historical accuracy, because those are actually existing current platforms today.
Just because the PC scene isn't as 'retro', doesn't mean that those machines don't exist. If sceners are interested, they can easily get the parts from Ebay or such, and get such a configuration. Pretty much the same way as you'd obtain an AGA box with accelerator these days.
Besides, even for Amiga there are various demos that only work on a handful of real machines. Take Planet Potion for example, requires a specific PPC and 3d accelerator. It's a very popular Amiga demo, but there's probably less than 20 machines in the whole world that could actually run the demo.
It's up for everyone to decide for themselves whether availability of a certain platform is a reason to support the platform or not.
Exactly. 8088+VGA+Adlib --> suitable for Wild Compo category. ;)
I don't care about categories or platforms. Cool demos are cool demos :)
I don't code for wild compos; I code for oldskool compos.
The more people say "This platform sucks", the more I am inclined to find out what you can do with it and push the limits :P
How correct is the argument than 286 can be faster than a 386sx at the same mhz? At least for games optimized for 286. And why?
That argument is totally "incorrect" :]
Some people swore Prince of Persia, Wolfestein 3d, Dizzy were faster on 286 than 386 SX with the same MHz and RAM but I think they were just fooling themselves. Those games were faster on 386 SX.
The only explanation I can think of is a different gfx card, but still sounds kinda improbable.
There are marginal ways a 286 can be faster than a 386sx at the same clock speed, most of them barely noticeable outside of a specialized benchmark such as dosbenchmark.wordpress.com. 0-wait-state memory and a good video card were required.
Yea, I don't think the CPU would be a factor, if a 286 is faster than a 386sx.
Most probably would be the VGA card. In those days there was a HUGE difference between bad VGA cards and good ones.
I recall that a friend of mine had a Realtek VGA card in his 386sx-16. One thing I recall was that it was REALLY bad at scrolling in Sierra games (which afaik was just a bruteforce rep movsw operation).
My 8088-9.54 had a Paradise VGA card, which was a pretty good card, and it actually scrolled better, even though the CPU was clearly much slower.
Most probably would be the VGA card. In those days there was a HUGE difference between bad VGA cards and good ones.
I recall that a friend of mine had a Realtek VGA card in his 386sx-16. One thing I recall was that it was REALLY bad at scrolling in Sierra games (which afaik was just a bruteforce rep movsw operation).
My 8088-9.54 had a Paradise VGA card, which was a pretty good card, and it actually scrolled better, even though the CPU was clearly much slower.
IBM AT 4 LIFE, noobs!
with MDA card cos who needs colors?!
After moving over from the Amiga my first PC was a 486 DX33 with a 512KB Cirrus Logic card and an SoundBlaster16 plus a massive 512MB HDD :) no CDROM (I needed a PC for course at college, so this was approx 1994). Can't recall how much RAM it had though.
Once i upgraded to an AMD DX4/100 it wasnt quite as stable!
Fairly standard platform for the day, and it ran most games and demo's without problems.
The main computer lab at college had banks of 386 dx33's (didn't see many sx's) a couple 486s and a bunch of old 286s which weren't used for much.
Programming environments were M$s PWB (DOS based Programmers WorkBench for realmode C). I used Borlands Turbo Pascal 6 as well as i'd be exposed to that at a previous place.
By the time I finished college we were using Visual C 1.52 which will also build real-mode DOS apps (and allow inline asm)
Once I started at work in '96 as well as using Visual C 1.52 i used BP6 (again), MASM and protected mode Watcom C (dos4gw). By that time the Pentium was out.
Once i upgraded to an AMD DX4/100 it wasnt quite as stable!
Fairly standard platform for the day, and it ran most games and demo's without problems.
The main computer lab at college had banks of 386 dx33's (didn't see many sx's) a couple 486s and a bunch of old 286s which weren't used for much.
Programming environments were M$s PWB (DOS based Programmers WorkBench for realmode C). I used Borlands Turbo Pascal 6 as well as i'd be exposed to that at a previous place.
By the time I finished college we were using Visual C 1.52 which will also build real-mode DOS apps (and allow inline asm)
Once I started at work in '96 as well as using Visual C 1.52 i used BP6 (again), MASM and protected mode Watcom C (dos4gw). By that time the Pentium was out.
