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Trixter's latest magic... Holy how-in-the-hell!!!???

Complain: It's all green there! ;-)

Complain: It's all green there! ;-)

Do I now get a 1st price on the category "running 8088mph on the most strange/exotic PC hardware" ???

DSC_5842.jpg DSC_5844.jpg DSC_5860.jpg a2.jpg

See all of the pictures in my latest picture album. Best is to click on the last picture and then go backwards throuh the album (press the "Prev" button!!!). This will give you the best impression my newest piece of my collection, the O... E... ty... and shows the 8088mph screens in the correct order.

Go here: http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/album.php?albumid=283&attachmentid=24143

Ps.: I love that machine!
 
Well, it proves without a doubt that the ETV has a clone CGA card :)

The BIOS startup is very reminiscent of the M24 -- I wonder which system came first.

I love the word processor+printer combo!
 
Hello, all of the Olivetti PCs of the 1980's era have the same style of BIOS. M24 was the first of the series in 1983. M19 PC came out in 1986, I think together with M28 (80286). ETV 260 is based on M19 motherboard and slightly enhanced version of ET 116 printer mechanics and came out in 1987.
 
Yesterday evening I again played arround with my ETV 260. I discovered a "slow.com" and a "fast.com" and tryed them. With this commands the ETV 260 turns between 7.12 and 4.77 MHz as I could verify with Checkit. (These commands also should work on a 8 MHz M19 PC as it's the same mainboard.) After runnig "slow" 8088MPH was happy to see a 4,77 MHz machine, but that didn't helped in all the display problems of the demo, some looked a bit different, but still wrong. I have created now a small batchfile into the 8088mph folder:

rem run.bat
slow
8088mph
fast
mode co80

I also tested the 8088mph demo on my ETV 2700 (Nec V40 CPU 10 Mhz, CGA, newer printer, technology much more simplified compared to ETV 260, "low cost" successor) and there even less works, many of the screens just stay black, but I already expected that.

By the way, Trixter, I have heared that you have done some more demos to run on XT computers. Where I can download them?
 
By the way, Trixter, I have heared that you have done some more demos to run on XT computers. Where I can download them?

Pouet.net is a good place to start, if you search for Trixter's group Hornet: http://www.pouet.net/groups.php?which=541
8088 Corruption and 8088 Domination will both run on a PC/XT.
And then there's MONOTONE, the PC speaker tracker that runs on PC/XT.
INTROjr and SHAKEjr run on PCjr.

There are a few other 8088/CGA demos, notably this competition: http://www.pouet.net/party.php?which=204
(8086 Feet Under is uncredited, but I believe that is also Trixter's handywork).
And the CGADEMO by Codeblasters: http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=64406
And this little thingie (very slow, I was told): http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=61483
This is an 8088/CGA port of a 32-byte intro: http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=63627
And this, which seems to work better in DOSBox than on real hardware: http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=65292
This silly thing isn't even worth mentioning, but oh well: http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=58526

I also did this a few years back, it works on 8088, but requires EGA: http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=62165
 
One is missing. I saw it once on a HomeCon meeting running on a Commodre PC1 with XT-IDE adapter. It was a kind of movie/animation in black & white but very smooth and long. What's that?
 
Hello, Ok, thanks, then I have it. Now I need to transfer these to the ETV...

Edit: Oh... wow... 30 megs... I need to wait until I have build an XT IDE controller... The components are ordered, but not here yet.
 
Edit: Oh... wow... 30 megs... I need to wait until I have build an XT IDE controller... The components are ordered, but not here yet.

If you want to just play a video, look at the batch file, pick the one you want (bad apple is the B&W animation), and copy only that over.

8088 Domination's tech has it's own website: http://x86dc.wordpress.com

BTW, thanks to Scali who saved me a lot of typing :-D
 
And this, which seems to work better in DOSBox than on real hardware: http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=65292

I reverse-engineered it to see what the problem was, and the code was indeed severely broken.
Fixed version for real PCs here (source included): http://bohemiq.scali.eu.org/GP-01-fixed.zip

In short, I've added proper CRTC initialization for the two tweaked modes that the demo uses. The demo also tried to use timing based on int 70h and port 70h/71h. That is the CMOS realtime clock, and requires a second interrupt controller, neither of which 8088s have.
So I rewrote timing based on the standard timer interrupt.
I also fixed some bugs to make keyboard handling work on real PCs, and to make it exit properly.

I left in the bugs in the music and the graphics. On real hardware, silent notes are not silent, but have a 'buzz'. The first part scrolls in the logo without clipping, on real hardware you get wraparound at the top of the screen. Also, since it's 80-column textmode, you have lots of snow issues on real CGA. They made no attempt whatsoever to avoid that (unlike 8088MPH).
They also didn't bother to do any v-sync whatsoever, they just put in some manual delay loops here and there, so it's not exactly the smoothest demo in the world.
But oh well, at least it actually works on a real IBM 5160 now. Should also work on a 5150 and any 8088+CGA clone. It doesn't do anything unusual. The 80x50 and 80x100 tweaked textmodes it uses were common back in the day and should work on most CGA-clones.
 
GP-01 does now something more than before on my ETV 260.

Is that good or bad? :)
Here's some videos in various stages of fixing:
Original version on IBM 5160, broken in many ways.
Quick-fix on IBM 5160, just enough to show all the bugs in the visuals and the audio.
Full-fix on IBM 5160, fixes wraparound, smooth scrolling and music. Still suffers from snow because, well, CGA.
Full-fix on ATi Small Wonder CGA clone, this card doesn't suffer from CGA snow, so it finally looks as intended.
 
it's pretty damn fine that some top notch people still produce high-end stuff for the limited machines :)
perhaps we will see the ultimate EGA demo too...sometimes.
 
Oh, on these videos its looking quite different... The pixel graphics doesn't appear at all.

Well, they aren't pixel graphics.
Everything is done using tweaked textmodes. Either 80x50 (plasma) or 80x100 (everything else). So the 'graphics' are actually created by setting the characters to only 2 pixels high, and then choosing the most appropriate characters for each 8x2 block of pixels.

Perhaps the video card in the ETV260 is not compatible enough to support this tweakmode.
 
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