pouët.net

Hi there,

I think that is by far the very best CGA-Demo I watched. The "lake" effect look like pixelshader-reflection, simply amazing (was it used on a scene from thalion chambers of shaolin on the atari-st too?).

The speed the colors the effects. Looks like a AAA production for a C64/Amiga demo. not like an ordinary demo for IBM-PC.

I tested it on my Tandy1000 RL/HD but only a view effects worked. To bad the lake effect does not! I don't know if the final release will make some other machines working on some effects, but I don't think so. The target is 5150 so it will likely only work with that.

BUT I HAVE NO 5150 :(

Best regards
Doc

Thank you for sharing.

Perhaps I can make use of my A8088XT... but that will not a thing for the next days more for the next months.

5150, 5155, 5160 and various good clones.

Hi there,

I think I'll fry some eggs with bacon tonight for dinner... maybe I'll put it on some toast too. Would've loved to have a fresh baguette with that but unfortunately I only have some old plain white in the freezer. I wonder if I should add some sliced pickles.

Best regards
Pablo

TANDY 1000 does display some early scenes, after that the screen goes blank and the music slows down. EuroPC with RAM Expansion is even worse. I will try it on my Amiga 2000 Bridgeboard if I can catch a CGA card. With that it should work...perhaps...we will see.

I would have expected that the EuroPC CGA is better than Tandy1000 but it's worse.

We will see what the "technical writeup" says about the tricks and the compatibility...

Same as 8088 MPH: register-compatible, cycle-exact to an IBM 5150 with IBM CGA.
Which means: 5150, 5155, 5160 and various good clones.

Yeah, we only tested it on IBM 5150 and equivalent machines. We did try to make effects in such a way that they'd be compatible with other machines where we could easily do so, but some things just couldn't be done without counting cycles and hammering registers...

8088 MPH already indicated compatibility issues with motherboards built around the FE2010 integrated chipset, and CGA clones built on the ATi Graphics Solution/Small Wonder.
So these are not likely to work with Area 5150 either.
The original Compaq Portable clone (including its CGA clone card) appeared to run 8088 MPH correctly, so that might work.
A Philips P3105 ran 8088 MPH correctly, once the stock ATi Small Wonder was replaced with an original IBM CGA card. Likely it will also run Area 5150.

True, chipset-based CGA clone hardware always seems to miss something obscure but crucial when it comes to 100% 6845 compatibility.

BTW, maybe we should've clarified another reason that non-IBM CGA boards aren't "officially" supported, which is the character set. In CGA that's always fixed in ROM, and with this demo (as with 8088 MPH) things probably won't look as intended if the font is different from IBM's.

But now you have a goal.

I will not rip-off my A2000 with A2286 VGA (ET4000K), so I will order another A2000 KS 1.3 motherboard. I still have three A2088XT and beside the CGA Emulation on this, it's possible to put in a real CGA card.

How big are the chances if I put a real CGA card beside that board?

http://amiga.resource.cx/photos/photo2.pl?id=a2088xt&pg=1&res=hi&lang=en

Too bad that these high-end-demos require a very special hardware, but I agree these demos are worth it!

It uses the dreaded FE2010 chipset.
That didn't work 100% with 8088 MPH, it even locks up at the endpart.
So I wouldn't take my chances with Area 5150 either.

Well, that A2088XT card has an FE2010 chipset and a V20 CPU that apparently runs at 8 MHz ... that's multiple red flags right there.

(And it only has 512k of RAM.)

That appears to be an aftermarket upgrade. The A2088XT is normally sold with an 8088 CPU.
It uses the FE2010A chipset, where the 'A' version supports three speeds: 4.77 Mhz, 7.16 Mhz and 9.54 MHz.
With a simple toggle of the relevant chipset registers, you can switch clockspeeds.
The A2088XT doesn't officially support this, and runs at 4.77 MHz, but people knew how to modify their bridgeboards to enable the additional speeds (requiring a CPU capable of running at these speeds):
http://aminet.net/package/docs/hard/turbo2088

Someone made a recording on a Compaq Portable, one of the first IBM PC clones.
Appears to run the demo flawlessly from start to end:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_U0VxfFx-M

wat

I have a modified A2000 3.1 board in stock, I already have three different A2088XT versions here and I also have a RAM Expansion to 640K here. What I am missing is a real CGA card. So it's a small step, much smaller than getting a real 5150 machine and my "combo" has a greater benefit of letting much more software run on that "combo-machine". I hope this explanation helps to understand why after the Tandy1000 and the EuroPC1 this is my third optional target, before searching for the real thing (5150 or a clone).

But if there will obviously be a big chance that this A2088XT configuration will likely not run that stuff, than I will stop this attempt.

I already asked the "bridgeboard-papst" to checkout on his ready to go machines if Area5150 works...we will see what he will post later this week...

Scali already wrote that the used chipset on the A2088XT has issues ... that's not good :(
My A2088XT are all stock 4,77Mhz 8088 machines. I will check if they all use the same chipset.

These are my three cards:
https://ibb.co/3My0mF2
https://ibb.co/C16KrBD

Would love to see a compatibility-list for XT-machines regardless of the manufacture. As you already can tell, if none of my machines will be able to run this, I will go for a small clone machine... I cannot place another big machine in my gaming-room.

Problem is that there's no way to tell other than to just run the demo on each machine and see what happens.
What makes it more complicated is that it's the combination of machine and CGA card that matters.
Like my example of the Philips P3105, some clones may work, but not with the CGA card they were sold with. A real IBM CGA card, or a cycle-exact clone (like the one in the Compaq Portable) will work.

So there are two areas to explore:
1) Mainboard compatibility
2) CGA card compatibility

1) is best tested by using a real IBM CGA card, so you can rule out that variable.
2) is best tested by installing the CGA cards in a real IBM 5150, 5155 or 5160, so the mainboard variable is eliminated.

But you'd need someone with access to the specific hardware and the willingness to spend time on testing the demo on the various configurations.

I don't expect too much of that to happen. So we'll just have to make do with the few configurations on which people happen to run the demo, and which happen to work correctly.