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260 Comments
- Krumm, on 01/02/2008, -18/+150Smoother video than my dual core Vista machine when you try to use the network during playback!
Dugg for sheer awesomeness...(& Tron). - cozb, on 01/02/2008, -1/+99ah, to hear the clicking of a real keyboard again...
- Biks, on 01/02/2008, -8/+86Was this a RECENT hack? What person is still screwing with these machines? And if so...why wasn't anyone doing this back in 1981? (or was the idea of full video on a PC too nuts to even conceive of?)
- GeorgeWKush, on 01/02/2008, -5/+81How am I supposed to jerk off when my porn wouldn't look any better than Super Mario.
- keepinithamsta, on 01/02/2008, -1/+76That quality is better than some videos on youtube!
- Elliuotatar, on 01/02/2008, -3/+77Well, they're plotting what are practically 40x20 graphics. (Though some blocks on the screen appear to be subdivided a little more the majority are huge.) A 40x20 16 color video video that is two minutes long with 16 colors at 30 fps would display 24,000 "pixels" per second. Each 16 color pixel requires 4 bits, so divide that in half to get 12,000 bytes per second. Multiply that by 120 seconds and you get 1,440,000 bytes. Then add sound. Two minutes, 8 bit, let's say 8,000hz... That's 960,000 bytes there. So you're talking 2.5 megabytes.
Now consider that the floppies only held 360K, and you're talking a 7 disk install, which was unheard of back then. It would have taken about 15-30 minutes to load each disk onto the PC. And for what? A blocky FMV for a game? Back then games didn't have FMV. Getting video onto a PC would also have been expensive, and games back then were written by one or two guys in their basement.
That said, I did see years ago, FMV on the Amiga. So there may have been some FMV demos on those old PC's. But that's all they would have been in. Demos. And I don't mean game demos. I mean music videos made by programmers to show off how good they are. The demo scene's not what it used to be now that 3D graphics are easy to do. But back then demos were all the rage as coders tired to get as much as they could out of the hardware.
Which is probably why this guy did this. It's too easy to do cool graphics now. So he tried to make something cool on crappy hardware. - theghoul, on 01/02/2008, -6/+65A girlfriend have not you.
- ncdave101, on 01/02/2008, -1/+51Just pretend it's Princess Peach like you always do....
- Chirp08, on 01/02/2008, -1/+39seriously, can you imagine where video technology would be today if the porn industry got ahold of this on the computer in 1981??
- homersaysdoh, on 01/02/2008, -0/+34FINALLY! I've been waiting 27 years for this. Now I can trash my Core 2 quad comp and HDTV!
- TGMD, on 01/02/2008, -3/+33I miss the good old days of tech....
- vroom101, on 01/02/2008, -2/+30I'm guessing the software is written in assembly language, and clever tricks are been used to manipulate the CGA video adapter; the video interrupt handler may also have been customized. IBM had excellent and very detailed documentation for the PC XT and AT hardware, as well as for the plugin adapaters -- schematics, BIOS listing . . . all the good stuff. But back to the CGA video card: If I recall correctly you had to know what you were doing otherwise you could wreck the monitor.
- loggia, on 01/02/2008, -4/+32In 30 years will my Alienware 7500 be used to fight robots in space as a test to prove "it could be done?"
Just wonderin' - cdawzrd, on 01/02/2008, -0/+27Noob. Build your own.
- Protonz, on 01/02/2008, -1/+2820 years from now they will be simulating holograms on our current PCs...
- riah, on 01/02/2008, -4/+30or just use vlc.. (what's with the unnecessary FUD?)
- ObviousCat, on 01/02/2008, -12/+35Normally an old computer cannot run full-motion color video.
- subterfuge, on 01/02/2008, -0/+23if you simulate a hologram on a 2-dimensional screen, isnt that just . . . a video?
- Hawkeye05, on 01/02/2008, -3/+26Man, I want a beowulf cluster of these bad boys maybe 30 or 40 and i could play a DVD.
- tidu, on 01/02/2008, -0/+22why wasn't someone doing this in 1981? Can I ask why you're not simulating holograms on your current PC?
- imightbewrong, on 01/02/2008, -2/+248088 ftw
- Gordo0852, on 01/02/2008, -0/+20nah. This was done a few years ago. I remember seeing it before.
- bitterbug, on 01/02/2008, -4/+24Oh wow, I just had a dorkgasm.
- smurf22, on 01/02/2008, -4/+22Or you can download a freaking codec and stop being a noob.
- tidu, on 01/02/2008, -1/+18it's a ***** american website used primarily by americans
is COLORED ARMOR HUMOROUS to you? - tnoy, on 01/02/2008, -0/+17http://www.archive.org/details/8088CorruptionExpla ...
He explains exactly how he does it in the video here. - monospaced, on 01/02/2008, -1/+17Digg started in California, you wanker.
- diggstown, on 01/02/2008, -1/+17I don't see a .co.uk at the end of any of these links so go screw.
- hadak, on 01/02/2008, -1/+17Actually, this is old news. They display the video using ASCII, which can be rendered much faster and with much less graphics processing power than a FMV.
- RedHerringHack, on 01/02/2008, -0/+15Isn't this the machine John Titor was looking for?
- kzathon, on 01/02/2008, -1/+16mmhmm, yes, "people"...
- vibrokatana, on 01/02/2008, -1/+15back then video encoding would take a month or dozen to do.
- Samtheman007, on 01/02/2008, -0/+14It did. Only 10mb though.
- gamemaster357, on 01/02/2008, -2/+16if he is able to achieve full motion video at 30FPS on a 4.77MHZ processor
can you imagine what he could do given the right funding for research? - Urusai, on 01/02/2008, -0/+14The text buffer is mapped to segment 0xB800 (IIRC) and they are just copying stuff over it using REP MOVSW. No processing, just moving of bytes.
- sstidman, on 01/02/2008, -1/+15Well, people managed to jerk off to ASCII porn back in the day. This is actually a step up.
- johnfritz, on 01/02/2008, -0/+13Yeah, the video demo was cool but the clickin'/clackin' keyboard was way better! We all forget just how good we had it back then....
- directive0, on 01/02/2008, -0/+13I have a bucket.
- RoboRay, on 01/02/2008, -1/+14"Now consider that the floppies only held 360K, and you're talking a 7 disk install, which was unheard of back then."
You're assuming that the machine had a hard drive to install TO. :p - omnipotent, on 01/02/2008, -0/+13You're just jealous you didn't get a credit card to max it out and buy an Alienware.
But honestly, Alienware is for chumps. - Mononuclear, on 01/02/2008, -0/+1290% of the things on the internet do not help anyone and aren't useful in any way. That doesn't mean it's not entertaining.
- vibrokatana, on 01/02/2008, -0/+11umm, video playback work out of the box for me. Maybe you confused that with windows which requires you to download a player that supports the codecs you want to play?
- inactive, on 01/02/2008, -0/+11The base price was $2880 in 1981
- marciot, on 01/02/2008, -0/+11
You can download it here:
http://www.oldskool.org/pc/8088_Corruption
Works fine in the DOS prompt under XP. I tried running this on an HP100LX palmtop computer, which is a faithful reproduction of the PC XT, and I was disappointed that this required a SoundBlaster card and there are no command line switches to disable it. This is a major disappointment :( - sirbeta, on 01/02/2008, -2/+13Usually?
- Camphlobactor, on 01/02/2008, -0/+10l miss the good old days.
- noseeme, on 01/02/2008, -0/+9Protip: You are doing it wrong.
- tidu, on 01/02/2008, -0/+9no, I'm digging you down for being a downer, regardless of your name
- Myztry, on 01/02/2008, -0/+9Oh. Crap. The C64 demo scene did it all the time
- inactive, on 01/02/2008, -0/+9It was most likely using color ASCII text mode (16 background/foreground colors) and extended ASCII characters which included things like filled blocks, etc. for pseudo-GUI applications.
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