8088 Domination Post-Mortem, Part 1

http://trixter.oldskool.org/2014/06/19/8088-domination-post-mortem-part-1/

by userbinator • 12 years ago

252 106 12 years ago

trixter.oldskool.org

jcr• 12 years ago

The work is very impressive, but the part I loved most was how even after deciding the problem was "impossible" to solve, he kept at it:

"Then I thought about the problem for 7 years."

frownie4• 12 years ago

In the demoscene, doing the impossible was just regular behaviour :-) Just look at what they get out of a mere C64...

adestefan• 12 years ago

The VIC-II and SID chips in the C64 are amazing. They blew away anything that could be found inside an IBM PC.

Jare• 12 years ago

guard-of-terra• 12 years ago

I never knew CGA could do 16 colors. In my memory 16 colors is EGA.

transitorykris• 12 years ago

That caught my attention as well. I wish I knew this trick 3 decades ago.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Graphics_Adapter#160.C3.9...

frownie4• 12 years ago

Interstingly they talk about the "change palette in the middle of the screen" tricks that we used in Imphobia. The precision timing was certainly tricky, especially when playing a MOD-file while drawing ! Ahhh memories...

MattBearman2• 12 years ago

My family had a CGA pc when I was young, and while it could do 16 colours, the horribly low resolution of the 16 colour mode meant very little ever made use of it.

Narishma4• 12 years ago

It's not that horrible. You can do some pretty interesting things with it, like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G66KL-hxxKI

rasz_pl3• 12 years ago

King's Quest I did 16 colors on CGA

Gormo• 12 years ago

CGA wasn't natively capable of displaying 16 distinct colors in its higher-resolution modes. KQ1 - and a lot of games in that era - did 16 colors on CGA's composite mode by actually exploiting the peculiarities of NTSC video to generate color artifacts on the screen. If you were to view the same video on an RGB monitor, what you'd actually see would usually be a monochrome screen filled with varying patterns of narrow horizontal and vertical stripes.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Graphics_Adapter#Special_...

nevster• 12 years ago

Wow - Trixter from Hornet - haven't heard that name in a long time. Always fun to dip back into the demoscene every now and then. Think I might just break out my Mindcandy dvd tonight.

vijayaggarwal• 12 years ago

As a person who started with 24-bit colors, I only have a lot of respect for Jim.

dennisnedry• 12 years ago

This is truly impressive, I'm amazed by how fast it renders. So I guess Mr. Gates was right, you only need 64k...

chj• 12 years ago

and no more than 4.77mhz.

Luyt• 12 years ago

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers" - Thomas J. Watson, 1943.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_J._Watson

jacquesm10• 12 years ago

So I guess Mr. Gates was right, you only need 64k...

That was 640K.

zak_mc_kracken• 12 years ago

And it wasn't Bill Gates who said that.

fixerfrasse2• 12 years ago

The Spaceballs references almost makes me cry of nostalgia. Thanks!

fixerfrasse2• 12 years ago

The references to Spaceballs left a nostalgic tear in my eye.

jacquesm10• 12 years ago

That's absolutely insane at that clockrate. The way I would get 'animations' (for want of a better term) done is by rendering them frame-by-frame, compressing that and then playing it back at high speed. And even that was next to impossible. Decompressing video @60fps, and doing real-time dithering to increase the effective number of colours and still have time enough for 45KHz audio is totally nuts. This qualifies as art, not just software.

sgt5• 12 years ago

"This qualifies as art, not just software."

For me there was never any doubt.

A bit unrelated, but I've got an old 5150 at my parent's place, so when I'm visiting next Xmas I'll try to load this demo onto it. The only problem is that of transferring files to it. It only has a 5.25" floppy drive, and I don't have a means to copy files onto those floppies.

Any suggestions?

jacquesm10• 12 years ago

Laplink?

JonnieCache• 12 years ago

Squirt it in bit by bit down a serial port?

offmycloud• 12 years ago

KryoFlux is a USB-based floppy controller http://www.kryoflux.com/

Two9A• 12 years ago

I have, in the past, been forced to type an Xmodem transfer program into debug.com's hex mode, to get to the point where I can transfer files over a null-modem connection from another box. I can dig up the file in question, if that'd help you out at all.

I ended up typing it in 1k at a time, and independently typing in a CRC32 utility to check that I'd done it properly.

(That was to install Windows 98 on a computer with no drives, if I recall. So, not so very long ago.)

crististm• 12 years ago

You can run Norton Commander on both computers and set them on connect mode. One PC is set as master and the other as slave; connect them physically with a parallel cable.

userbinator2• 12 years ago

For me, the most interesting part is that his solution - updating only the changed parts between each frame and the previous one, and approximating the changes so that they're not (too) visually perceptible in order to satisfy a bitrate constraint - is one of the ways that modern video codecs achieve their compression.

I agree it's also amazing that apparently, the true limitations of hardware from over 30 years ago are still rather elusive... this is the complete opposite of the "throw more hardware at it" attitude towards most software problems today, but instead it's "throw more brainpower at it".

jacquesm10• 12 years ago

"throw more brainpower at it"

Back then there was simply no other way. I remember doing a 3D real-time fly-by of a big architectural development in Amsterdam ("Meervaart") in the 80's. I custom built the machine, pulled a trick where I clocked the fp coprocessor faster than the main processor, had a tseng graphics card (just about as fast as it would go at the time). And all the rest was software, hidden line removal, 800x600 on some primitve beamer at 25 fps. It was the best I could do at the time and it took many weeks to prepare for that demo. Just digitizing the whole neighbourhood was a monks job, I still have the aerial photograph as a souvenir from the job.

I got paid with a rusty old car that I wanted the engine from :)

lloeki3• 12 years ago

The more I progress in our domain of expertise, the more I observe we're being incredibly wasteful† all over the place. For all the expressiveness power of our platforms and languages it somehow sounds insane that time (ruby -e '100_000_000.times {}') takes four solid seconds on my 3.4GHz machine††. I know, bogoMIPS are no benchmark, this is just to exemplify that layers of abstraction, while useful (necessary even), are also harmful, the underlying question being: how much layers is too much layers?

I dream of a system redesigned from the ground up, where hardware and software components, while conceptually isolated, cooperate instead of segregating each other to layers. See how ZFS made previously segregated layers cooperate to offer a robust system, see how TRIM operates on the lowest hardware levels by notifying of filesystem events, see how OSI levels get pierced through for QoS and reliability concerns. Notice how the increase in layers and thus holistic complexity rampantly leads to more bugs, more vulnerabilities, more energy wasted. We all know the fastest code is the one that does not execute, the most robust code is the one that doesn't get written, the most secure code is the one that doesn't exist. Why do I still see redraws and paintings and flashes in 2014? Why does a determined adversary has such a statistical advantage that he is almost guaranteed toget a foothold into my system? This is completely unacceptable. For as much as we love playing with it, the whole web stack, while a significant civilization milestone, is, as a whole, a massive technological failure (the native stack barely fares better).

† I consider wasteful and bloated subtly distinct

†† not at all an attack on Ruby, just what I happen to have at hand right now

StillBored3• 12 years ago

the true limitations of hardware from over 30 years ago are still rather elusive

That was the basic idea that kept the Apple II line alive for ~15 years on an 8 bit processor running at 1Mhz. Of course at the end, there were a handful of faster configurations but the IIgs @ 2.5Mhz and the short lived IIc+ at 4Mhz were the only machines apple produced with faster processors.

to3m• 12 years ago

See also http://bespin.org/~qz/pc-gpe/fli.for - the .fli format was pretty common at one time and does this same delta encoding.

Narishma4• 12 years ago

Isn't dithering done offline at encoding time?

_quasimodo• 12 years ago

real-time dithering

Wasn't dithering done before the encoding? I thought that was the reason he needed ordered dithering.

MattBearman2• 12 years ago

The PC I ever used was an Amstrad 8086 CGA, seeing the 4 colour palette 1 again made me super nostalgic. Somehow back then playing games with only black, white, magenta and cyan didn't bother me.

johansch• 12 years ago

The Amstrad PC1512/PC1640 actually had this quirky 640x200x16 color mode. I only ever came across one piece of software except the bundled GEM that supported it though...

przemoc2• 12 years ago

8088 Domination is one of the examples of truest hacking and deserves to be sticky on HN. I mean it!

frownie4• 12 years ago

Wiz / Imphobia here.. Damn, that is dedication. I didn't know there was a 160x200 X 4 bits resolution on the CGA card. How was that activated ?

frownie4• 12 years ago

forget about it, the answer to my question was written below my post :-) kudo for the video on the XT !

DanBC• 12 years ago

Wikipedia has a bit under "special effects on composite monitors" http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Graphics_Adapter

beyondcompute• 12 years ago

Amazing!

leoc• 12 years ago

The author mentions getting involved with Video for Windows in the early '90s. For a laugh, here's some official VfW sample video from 1992 for comparison: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4ieKNtZ8yY

Arjuna• 12 years ago

Wow... for that hardware, a 4.77MHz 8088 PC with CGA graphics and Sound Blaster audio, those stats are overwhelming:

1. Variable frame-rates up to 60 FPS.

2. Audio rates to 45kHz.

3. 16 colors through composite artifacting.

4. Simultaneous color and B&W output.

On a related note, you will probably be interested in Michael Abrash's Zen of Assembly Language. From the "README.md":

"This is the source for an ebook version of Michael Abrash's Zen of Assembly Language: Volume I, Knowledge, originally published in 1990. Reproduced with blessing of Michael Abrash, converted and maintained by James Gregory. Original conversion produced by Ron Welch."

https://github.com/jagregory/abrash-zen-of-asm

ajross• 12 years ago

It's worth pointing out (on a quick scan I don't see this called out in the article itself) that the preprocessing involved in generating these executables is almost certainly not meaningfully possible on a 5150 PC.

So while this might run on 1978-era hardware, it wouldn't have been possible for 1978-era hackers to create.

Audrey_II• 12 years ago

Incredible work! If only we had this kind of ingenuity today to get a simple graphics card working with Linux! Imagine the possibilities. One day, I might even have an option in Ubuntu to change the refresh rate to 60hz without entering 'xrandr -r 60' into the console EVERY DAMN TIME I REBOOT. Now, I know I'm going on a limb with this next one, but imagine if someone had the intelligence to code a universal installer that works every time and installed every piece of needed software all at once with zero user interaction??! I'm getting a bit craaazy here, but imagine effortless uninstalls! Mind blown.

Edit: "One more thing" as I get voted down by those in denial. Imagine this brilliance getting Linux to talk to a relatively unheard of device called an iPhone 5s! It sure would be nice getting pictures and video off this damn phone so I can free up space!

anon4• 12 years ago

Seems like memory would be the only limiting factor here, i.e. storing both the previous and current frame, computing the difference between the two, then sorting the runs. My hunch is it should be possible with a large enough HDD for swap space (obviously you'd have to swap yourself) and waiting a day to render a short movie.

Edit: and now I realise you need a movie source, which in 1978 means a VHS tape most likely. Reading that and converting it to a sequence of dithered frames (or "just" straight 24-bit 4:4:4 YUV) will definitely need some special hardware.

throwwit2• 12 years ago

For perspective, it was still difficult doing video in the year 1999... I still remember the lengths some people had to go, to get MPEG working on the Nintendo 64: http://web.archive.org/web/20080331015735/http://www.gamasut...

throwwit2• 12 years ago

(Edit - Single Page View: http://web.archive.org/web/20080326212226/http://www.gamasut... )

jaxb2• 12 years ago

I wonder how well PC emulators will render this :-)

Narishma4• 12 years ago

I don't know of any accurate IBM PC emulator. Most of the typical ones like DosBox will play it either too fast or too slow.

joakleaf• 12 years ago

Dosbox plays it fine, but only B&W.

jaxb2• 12 years ago

MESS and PCem should be accurate enough.

ctdonath• 12 years ago

When you can adapt the problem to the solution, the solution becomes much easier. Real-world problems are rarely so adaptable, first issue being "code from bare metal up" is rarely an option.

jhallenworld• 12 years ago

This reminds me of Yoomp!

http://yoomp.atari.pl/media.htm

1.79 MHz 6502..

detroitcoder• 12 years ago

If someone in 1981 had seen this running on the same hardware they would have assumed it was alien software created by a higher lever species.

Flow• 12 years ago

At first I wanted to link to C64 productions such as this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=gG... but then I realized that the IBM PC was vastly worse designed than the C64. On the CPU, although running at whopping 4.77 MHz, trivial operations takes loads of cycles. The graphics memory sits on an ISA slot, 8-bit path and few MHz data-rate.

So, well done doing this on a machine that weak!

mmastrac• 12 years ago

I imagine that part 2 is effectively going to involve "compiling" the sequences to assembly and executing them. You just don't have a lot of cycles to do much math on the 8088, so you may as well just write compile this as a big assembly program and start running it.

Looking forward to part 2 very much.

gwern• 12 years ago

Part 2 is already up, no? http://trixter.oldskool.org/2014/06/20/8088-domination-post-...

drivers99• 12 years ago

I can't wait to try this out. I still have my 4.77 MHz 8088 IBM PC with CGA video.

I don't have a monitor for it anymore, but that is fine since this was designed for the composite out anyway which I can put on a TV.

And I need to find an 8-bit SoundBlaster to put back in it.

Nice to see trixter doing stuff. I remember him from demoscene stuff in the 90s. Back then, PC demos were for 386/486/Pentium and VGA graphics. Nobody bothered with PC or XT (or CGA or EGA graphics) even back then.

ANTSANTS• 12 years ago

You might also be interested in these efforts to get video playing on the Sega Genesis (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vPe452cegU) and the TI-84 graphing calculator (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pAeWf3NPNU)

rasz_pl3• 12 years ago

This looks like reimplementation on animated GIF.

gaius• 12 years ago

That is not at all like how GIF animation works.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_Interchange_Format#A...

rasz_pl3• 12 years ago

Umm yes it is?

"Some economy of data is possible where a frame need only rewrite a portion of the pixels of the display, because the Image Descriptor can define a smaller rectangle to be rescanned instead of the whole image"

Every frame of animated gif can choose to modify small portion of previously drawn image. This is why you cant display animated gif starting in the middle, you will only render moving parts until you loop whole thing.

This is precisely what Author implemented, he is encoding changes between frames, this way cpu has to only modify parts of display memory that are changing.

How is that not the way animated gif works?

nitrogen• 12 years ago

It's fascinating that the developer basically reinvented RLE, but did it significantly better.

Natsu• 12 years ago

This makes me want to run this on my 8088. Does it fit on a 10 MB HD? Also, I wonder if any of the old floppies I have still work... I haven't turned the thing on in over a decade.

csense• 12 years ago

Wow, this is the first time I've seen Bad Apple on HN. That alone is enough to earn my upvote!

przemoc2• 12 years ago

Second (and the last) part of trixter's write-up on how 8088 Domination was achieved is already up there.

8088 Domination Post-Mortem, Conclusion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7924928

8088 Domination Post-Mortem, Part 1

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