When a system is software driven and open, there tends to be more possible than we may think!

I first became aware of this on the VCS (2600). Actual capability was combat basically. But, the chips were designed in a permissive way and it turns out if you flog it hard enough, good things can happen!

And seeing those tricks inspired me to explore: Atari, some C64, on my own and that shaped a career of both putting out fires whike making magic happen and here is the kicker: I got paid for it!

...Color Computer 2 and 3, Some C64, Apple 2, GS (dissappointing), PC ( the 8 bit like ones, sorry viler, lol, but I got unfinished business with those machines to do the moment I get something running with an ISA bus.) VCS, 7800.

More recently, e-paper, Propeller other embedded devices.

6502, 6809, 65816, Z-80, 8086, 8088, '386

Even g-code! Made more than a few industrial machines punch well above their weight class.

Unix, Linux, NT, DOS, Microsoft Unix whatever it is called, IRIX, HP UNIX... (I really miss SGI and I never hacked on

All the way back to a 6th grade door knob I found I could unlock just by pure manipulation.

I found the scene via disk intros, then via Internet and have followed ever sense. The art is fast, beautiful, thought provoking and fun.

If we did not have a scene to inspire, challenge, express the rage, party, I thimk we would have missed out on a coupla generations of talent thst could have easily remained latent. My own, such as it is, too.

I have made e-paper run at 13 + FPS and have an asteroids type game almost done.

Lots of extra colors, screen hacks, on most of this list... Copying that which they said cannot be copied... Data recovery, debugging, assrmbly language, machine language... almost all of it influenced by scene members who shared.

Honestly, it is kind of beautiful. Watch, be amazed, investigate, remix if warranted, make magic, share, wash rinse repeat... And with great power comes great responsibility. I never felt pushed to some dark behavior. I felt pushed to learn, play, share.

Nothing wrong with that.

Thank you all you sceners. I sure had fun and may be at a party yet.

I do not believe the scene will die. It will evolve. It will go where the limits are and then push past them.

I love the 1mhz Apple 2 because just about anything becomes usable this way.

And one running at 16Mhz is crazy! That same image routine can go a few times faster, limited in the end by the 1Mhz bus on the way to the graphics screen.

There are times when I wish the Apple ended up with a video card standard. That would have ended up PC like and may well have brought the higher speeds to more software more generally.

Same. It is a delightful cpu. Was thankfully simple enough for kids to understand without too much trouble. I got most of mine through magazines and a rough copy of the 6502 dtatsheet.

Prior to the 68K, I got to enjoy the 6809. Actually enjoy that one a bit more than the 68K as long as the project or data fits the overall capability. (It is no fun on any CPU when that becomes true)

I only did some small projects on the 68K. Still, more than enough to appreciate how Moto did things.

This code reproduces the Williams sound board, which ran a Moto 6800 at .85xx Mhz. It took arguments sent to it and or commands to play sound X via a parallel input. The classic Williams sound came from parameters input to this board. They would literally type them in and write down good ones.

Jarvis spoke about a sound priority system to give good players the right, most important sound at the right time. I hardly noticed! Read that and went to listen and defender actually interrupts sounds as needed! Which can actually make a new sound to the player. He has a GDC talk about all this.

It ends... well, yeah. The next entry in this series should be good.

The result was the GS pixel clock does not align with the NTSC colorburst period. It made artifact color useless, and that was sad because the GS could have done amazing graphics on an ordinary TV.

But, that aside, the overdriving of the color signal meant most users suffered through crappy video, or ran the machine monochrome, or had to buy the Apple monitor.

On the Apple, Woz leaned into NTSC and employed it to what I consider pretty great effect.

Dithers are contrived uses, not abuses!

The difference is one can dither on any display system and achieve visuals that convey greater color depth or more intensity granularity than the system design intent would allow for.

Again, on the Apple, artists would combine artifact colors, as well as the lack of color, say black and white, in ways that suggest other colors not intended.

The dot patterns can suggest various intensities and hues one cannot just ask for jn a COLOR = statement.

Does that help?

I will try and find an image or two to link a bit later.

https://twostopbits.com/item?id=5863

https://hackaday.io/project/164212/gallery#0f87e94323e101952...

I do not think it matches up. Too bad! But maybe the author will share details. I really wanted to know what they did.

Also, after I get past this appointment, maybe we can chat about dither vs artifact.

For a while, I had a SONY CD Changer in my car. You ever see the scratched up CDs often sold at flea markets for a buck each or less?

Many computers and players won't read them.

But that SONY does. And not only does it read them, the thing takes a bit longer to buffer due to all the scratches and massive error correction it has to do while buffering...

But once it does all that, it will play the disc flawlessly! Bumpy roads, too cold, too hot, disc too scratched?

All pretty much no problem.

I would gladly buy another. Was that good, but it won't read ANY recordable format.

Bummer.

It went with the car when I sold it. I put some of the very worst discs I had ever seen in it for demo purposes too.

Dude that bought the car loved it like I did. I did not mention CD-R largely because the player was going with the car no matter what.

And that capability preceded other tools and file formats by a decade easy! And offered as many features, and a few we still don't see today given things like Siemens JT, or PTC and whatever they use now.

We would display them three ways:

Netscape was the easy way, and one got a cool view manipulation GUI that way. This performed pretty well on higher end 90's hardware. Could display most of the front of a car with full dimensions and other annotations at reasonable frame rates.

Or, use the dedicated Java viewer the program output in addition to the raw file, which is what the browser used.

Or, buy a viewer tool, and we had one. Cosmo something....

On SGI, using the Java viewer, one could view the VRML in actual 3D with shutter glasses and pull up predefined views useful to shop people.

Really cool. Very few used the real 3D capability.

And that remains true today!

I have another high end CAD tool on my laptop, and it can display 3D on my 60 inch plasma at home. Does it 60hz per eye, which is crazy for both being more than a decade old!

There are at most a handful of companies able to employ similar capability today. Space X is one who does use it however. Go Space X!

I do, and will model complex surfaces in 3D. Pure joy to use.

But, it has to be that most users either do not care, or 3D bothers them, or something...

Also, same goes for viewing files. A small number used VRML back in the day. Today, a smaller, though also a larger than back in the day number use those tools today.

The rest are on paper or static PDF.

FWIW: Open WRL will display the 90's era CAD VMRL data. Kudos to them!