- Seriously! This is a very clever technique. It seems to trade a bit of quality for speed, but not enough to matter in most cases.
- That is a very nice speed boost. For some tasks, running on the Z80 may well be peak performance.
- Seconded
- I had no idea. I for sure will play with this some, then show it off!
- That one looks super interesting and yes! What is now the EU was and still is a parallel universe.
Many things were different. One big thing was much broader use of cassette media for program distribution compared to the US. Another is the rise of the Demoscene and I credit some of that to the greater time availability and social policy allowed for more hobby time, or low risk career investment time. Some may be education too.
And I could be wrong, but whatever the reason the fact is a lot of crazy good and distinctive development came from those places. Poland, as an example, remains an Atari 8 bit hot bed.
Bulgaria is where a lot of my best Apple 2 cards came from.
Seeing this thing sprout up from there is no real surprise, other than it existing at all really is!
- bmonkey325 363 days agoPoland could be an even hotter hotbed if they would release the revive machine. I will personally fly from Montreal to Frankfurt and then rent a car and drive to Warsaw to pick one up. In person.
- ddingus 362 days agoWhat is this revive machine?
- bmonkey325 362 days agohttps://revive-machines.com/index-en.html
- ddingus 362 days agoNice! I want one.
- Seriously! And I love the low level programmer thinking. Safety feature? Hold my beer!
- Yes. It is very cool to see the 8 bit (like) PC joining the others in the demoscene.
Had the CGA been shipped with more RAM, it is obvious now many new tricks would be both possible and more practical.
I love the emulation developers too. They really, really wantb to get it right. We really need to thank the sceners for flogging the hardware into fancy tricks and the emulator crews for capturing the subtleties thus making old hardware available for all to explore long term.
Edit: to properly identify the PC, lol thanks to viler
- I really enjoyed it! Always fun to hear someone else analyze your work. There could be a lot more to say about it obviously, but given the time limit I thought the most important bits were very well-covered... great use of visuals to illustrate the technical points, too.
> the 8 bit PC
...oh no you didn't :)
- I did! (Sorry, not sorry! Lol)
To me, it belongs with the 8 bit machines. Well, the very early ones do anyway.
Low Mhz operation, 8 bit bus, 8 ohm speaker, cassette port...
It is an awful lot like the Apple 2 and when equipped with a CGA, has that same feel.
I follow your CGA work with great interest. Thanks for sharing it.
- Oh wow! You’re the dude!
Thanks for sharing this work. Like a fine cognac. Smooth.
- Late to the party, but not missed.
Thanks for answering the call.
I have roughly a decade on you. I really need to explore the Speccy one day. I love bitmap games on the Apple 2 and always felt the Speccy and BBC Micro would be great to explore.
I do have a PAL capable PVM now and must say it looks a bit sharper for sure, but I love my 60Hz!
Retro DOS is my next target. I need to get a 386 or lower machine with ISA slots.
- This is a VERY useful page.
- I just looked and MSDOS has a printer API. Maybe that is what the author meant.
In MSDOS, I was able to use:
A mode line may be needed, and was with a tape punch:
MODE COM3:1200,N,8,1,P
And then, given the cable is setup to exchange the flow control signals: RTS, CTS
Then in MSDOS, this would work:
COPY GCODE.TXT COM3
The punch would start cutting paper tape.
I never did the reverse. Not sure how in MSDOS. I used PROCOM then clean up the capture and save to file.
And if one wants a binary, the /B option is needed so MSDOS will send 8 bits, not 7
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