Jim Leonard (AKA Trixter) has a great blog post about how he helped create the amazing 8088 MPH classic IBM PC demo that won the 2015 Revision demoparty’s ‘oldschool’ category. Jim has a long history with the PC demoscene and it’s great to see the results of years of research on pushing the IBM PC to its absolute limits. Remember everything seen in the demo video was generated in real-time by a ~5 mhz IBM PC that only officially supported 4 color graphics and a PC speaker/buzzer!
Because there are so many technological world-firsts in the demo, and because we’re bending the hardware in ways that people have never thought to do so, it’s only fair that we try to explain exactly how this was achieved. One of my roles was “organizer” for the demo, so I’ll break it down scene by scene, covering the basics of each trick. For parts that I wrote, I may go into more detail, but for a deep technical dive into certain areas, I’ll keep this blog entry updated to point to reenigne’s, VileR’s, and Scali’s blog posts about their parts (if they write them). It is our hope that these discussions will foster revived “old-school” interest in software development for the platform.
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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