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Recent content by PgrAm

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    640x400 256 color mode on standard VGA

    So I was looking at the VGA registers the other day and I thought, hey why isn't a 640x400x256 color mode possible? I'm talking about a standard VGA, non-VESA, Of course it would have to be unchained (aka mode X), but you could get 4 planes of 64,000 bytes each, of course you would only get one...
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    OPL clicking sound when triggering notes quickly

    Hey all, While Ive been working on polishing up Adlib-Host V1.2, I've been noticing an annoying issue with my Adlib(OPL) music player, it seems that whenever I trigger a note immediately after releasing a previous note I get an audible clicking noise. Doing more testing I was able to determine...
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    Best way to read/write to the serial port on MS-DOS hardware

    I wrote some code to send binary data back and forth via serial between an app on DOS PC and an app Windows PC. Initially I simply used Watcom's fopen to open com1 and fread/fwrite to send/receive data. Unfortunately while this works ok on DosBox, it is both unreliable and horrendously slow on...
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    Anyone seen this trackball before? I can't get it to work

    So using serial monitor I managed to verify that the trackball was not sending any bytes when moved, but I did receive bytes for the buttons. So I opened it up can cleaned out the dust but still no dice. I was able to confirm using my phone camera that the IR leds were actually lighting up...
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    Anyone seen this trackball before? I can't get it to work

    I saw this "PC Accessories" serial trackball at a surplus store and having not really done anything with trackballs before I decided to grab it and give it a shot. I first tried it on a windows 2000 PIII machine and it was recognized as a standard microsoft mouse, the buttons all seemed to work...
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    Is it safe to mess with the PIT timer modes?

    I'm messing with different ways to get high resolution timing in DOS, only now did I just realize you can simply read the counter from the PIT (good example here). However I don't need THAT much resolution (ticks at approximately 1.19 MHz), so I figure I'll just read the high byte from the timer...
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    My variation on masked blitting in Mode X

    Hey all I've been experimenting on different ways to implement transparent sprites in mode X and I came up with a method that I haven't seen before so I thought I might share. The image is stored in a standard planar format, with palette index zero representing a transparent pixel, and blitted...
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    Demo of Chuck Jones: Space Cop of the Future now available

    Hey All, as many of you know, I have been working on an adventure game for DOS for what feels like an eternity. Finally a shareware demo of it is now ready for y'all to play. So without further ado you can download it here: https://pgram.itch.io/chuck-jones Should run on well a 286 or better...
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    VGA timing for NTSC output with Mode X?

    Basically got it working, the line counts just need to be about half of what they would be with regular Mode-X. There is some over scan but I think that's just the TV, I'm gonna try on my other Sony monitor which has adjustable height and see if everything is being displayed. I'm gonna do...
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    VGA timing for NTSC output with Mode X?

    Hey all, I've been experimenting with getting a VGA card to produce an NTSC compatible signal, right now I'm using a box called TelevEyes. The box came with a little program to reprogram the VGA registers to output a 15khz signal, I have also tried using a utility called VGATV. The only problem...
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    color problem with IBM p70 workstation monitor

    Hey I recently got a nice IBM workstation monitor (a sony trinitron underneath) but it is having some issues displaying color correctly. When I feed in a VGA signal via the included 13w3 adapter it fails to display properly. Here is the result: If I disconnect the red channel from the input I...
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    What are you guys using for retroprogramming?

    Hey guys, I feel like I don't hear enough about how other retro-programmers work, I was wondering what you guys were all using for your retro-programming needs. What hardware are you targeting? What kind of compiler/interpreter software do you use? Do you program on old-school systems...
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    IBM model m spurious key presses

    I was cleaning my 1996 Model M the other day and after I put all the keys back in It started randomly acting as though the 'n' key is stuck down with no apparent pattern. The n key seems to work fine when I press it, at which point it stops acting as though its held down. Upon further inspection...
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    NEW tool "Adlib-Host", use your opl equipped PC as an external midi module

    As I work on making new DOS games I occasionally come up with a tool that I think other people might find useful. I re-used the adlib/midi code from Chuck Jones: Space Cop of the Future to create Adlib-Host, a program that you can run on your 16-bit PC with an Adlib and MPU-401 UART card (so it...
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    Strange horizontal interference in Mac SE screen

    Hi all, A little while ago I dug out my Mac SE FDHD and replaced it's dying hard disk with a much newer model. Afterwards as I was playing around with it, I noticed some strange horizontal lines in the video image, that look to me like an messed up sync signal. I made a video below which...
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