pouët.net

I believe we have party video and I can post here when I get it online.

I think what Trixter and myself are getting at, is that having a few 'standardized' platforms (ie, original IBM PC, XT, PCjr spec) opens up possibilities for cycle-exact coding and other special hardware hacks. Which makes it 'oldskool' in the same sense as C64 and other oldskool platforms.
The PC platform has rarely, if ever, been explored in this sense.
486 is already a 'newskool' platform. Nearly all effects are run entirely in software, no different from all those other platforms that run effects entirely in software. There is also no single 486 hardware specification, so cycle-exact coding is not possible (nor is it really required, because the CPU is more than fast enough to just perform such effects with polling).

Just bumping this thread. Hi all, I'm new to Pouet but certainly not new to the scene. I want in on this. :)

I'm a musician, my whole studio is set up using a P1-MMX running DOS as a master sequencer. I use IT mainly with a lot of outboard MIDI gear. (I also run Buzz & Renoise on my more modern comps.)

I could do (some) gfx too but not really much code. I have some ideas & routines in my head though.

Anyone wanna collaborate?

jmph: Welcome to demoscene.
I'm actually slowly working with someone on DOS demo but we have music and graphics as I'm a gfx artist and my good friend, Revisq, makes music but I would like to hear some of your tracks if it's possible.

Checking his Soundcloud is probably not a bad idea!
Also, he said he's new to Pouet, not new to the demoscene, so I guess you should write:

jmph: Welcome to Pouet!

And yes, welcome indeed! :)

right

Thanks guys! Yeah, I've been on the sides of the scene for a long time (used to hang out on Ojuice, ModRev, and United Trackers back in the day) but have never been in a group that released anything other than a few of my own tunes. The stuff on my Soundcloud is all done in Buzz+hardware; I haven't done much with my IT/DOS setup yet as it's still pretty new (also, I'm busy figuring out how to fix the mixing problems you can hear in some of my pieces.)

I have some old (1998~2001) IT/S3M tunes up on Modarchive somewhere but I won't link those yet as I've been wanting to give them a proper remastered release. :)

Trying to run univbe/vesa and other solutions so that I get vesa 2.0 on my pentium laptop, some chips & technologies graphics card brand, I can't get over vesa 1.2. Even some separate drivers I found for various brands, even this brand, doesn't work (can't recognize my card). Ahh...

I wanted to port some of my gamepark demos and my benchmark for 320*240*16bpp. I am trying some vesa 2.0 code I got from somewhere, maybe I could still use 1.2 from that code, but what's the difference? Non linear framebuffer?

Other than that this thread is keeping me hot, I was trying to find a good price for a 386 since a long on ebay, things are too expensive, but just bidding a 486sx laptop I found that starts with a low price. I would prefer to target 386dx, but the 486sx is not that far away at least.

And I would prefer to write classic VGA 8bpp and try either ModeX or bitplaned EGA(or is it VGA 16 colors?) modes. I only need vesa support to port my demos/benchmark from gamepark.

Depends on how you look at it.
Technically there's only mode 0Dh. On EGA you get 16 fixed colours, same as CGA textmode (EGA has a 64 colour palette, but this can only be used in the 640x350 hires mode, because IBM wanted to keep lores modes compatible with CGA monitors... weird).
On VGA, the 16 colours are mapped onto the VGA palette. This means that you can overwrite the first 16 colours of the palette to any colour you like.
So technically it's some sort of hybrid EGA/VGA mode.

hello 486

486 is "pops". Everyone has it. i8088 - true!

To the OP I would like to say read issue of Imphobia magazine and take their demo charts from top to bottom.

@branch: Looks like my old naked set ups :)

hopefully someone will release a nice retro-dos-demo this year ;-)

Scali: There have been games where the EGA 320x200 mode has been hacked to work with the bigger palette. Bubble Bobble and Ivan Ironman's Super Offroad at least IIRC.

I already did: http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=61547
But of course I would love to see more.

Ok, so I got a retro laptop (486sx33) but has no sound. I heard I can use PCMCIA sound card. But what kind of card should I search for such old machine? On Ebay I mostly find Sound Blaster Audigy 2 but maybe this is too modern for it.

Good thing it's slower than I thought (55 on Norton SI), with gfx card only writting maximum around 50fps on benchmark (dx project). So, it's not that further away than the 386 with Tseng Labs I originally wanted to target for a demo. It's time to look at this VGA 16 color, I will need it :)

@bugokitty:

http://lorezan.free.fr/pcmcia/SCP-55/roland-scp55.jpg
http://lorezan.free.fr/pcmcia/EXP-Soundnote/exp-soundnote.jpg
http://lorezan.free.fr/pcmcia/Ratoc/RATOC%20REX-5570%20front.jpg
http://lorezan.free.fr/pcmcia/fujitsu-eigermedia/eiger-fujitsu.jpg
http://lorezan.free.fr/pcmcia/IBM3DSound/ibm_pcmcia_audio.jpg
http://lorezan.free.fr/pcmcia/newmedia/wavjammer.jpg
http://lorezan.free.fr/pcmcia/newmedia/newmedia-soundscsi2.jpg
http://lorezan.free.fr/pcmcia/panasonic/cfvew211.jpg
http://lorezan.free.fr/pcmcia/panasonic/panasonic-soundcardpro-front.jpg
http://lorezan.free.fr/pcmcia/TDK_MC8000/tdk-mc8000.jpg
http://lorezan.free.fr/pcmcia/TDK_DMC9000/tdk_dmc9000_breakout.jpg

Quote:

-best midi quality in DOS games, the SCP-55
-best OPL3 quality in DOS games, one of the Panasonic
-if the game supports it, the Wavjammer
-for full (FM and digital audio) Sb/Sbpro emulation in some DOS games, the IBM 3D
-for full Sb/Sbpro emulation under Win9x, the Wavjammer or the EigerMedia/Fujitsu
-best midi quality in Win9x games, the TDK
-without external speakers nor headphone, one of the Panasonic for its unique feature

Wow, thanks for the information! Now if I can only found one of them on ebay or other sources, preferably SB emulator for Dos, would be great.

Aren't PCMCIA cards are really expensive and somewhat rare.

Bugo: Don't need VGA 16-color for full framerate on 486/33, that is crazy talk. Look into unchained VGA modes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_X

any new related retro-stuff released ?

my 286/10/vga/ct1350b want's new stuff...;-)
one of the nicest demo that is working on my machine is one here:
http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=4126

I've got the chance to code my engine some more, because of low level ludum dare. It's unoptimized yet and just flat rasterizer, but lot's has been done and I hope to continue with this and optiimize for the 486. I don't have anything slower right now to target, but 286 demo would be really more challenging.