Astro Hacker News - We ran Doom on a 40 year old printer controller (Agfa Compugraphic 9000PS) [video]

EvanAnderson |next [-]

My 12 y/o daughter recently ran into a "does it run DOOM" reference in media (I think a graphic novel-- not sure) and asked me about it. I got to explain the phenomenon and show her some examples (she found the pregnancy test to be particularly amusing). I'll have to show her this one.

vardump |root |parent |next [-]

The pregnancy test had altered innards. So it was fake.

EvanAnderson |root |parent |next [-]

Sadness for that, and for my inability to read in-depth.

vardump |root |parent [-]

Well, it's still a great idea and a cool project.

anthk |root |parent |previous [-]

But you can play Zachine v3 games in a pencil, such as Zork I-III, Tristam Island, Calypso... with builtin writting recognition under some special printed sheets (where you can print and then xerox them for the cheap).

Something1234 |root |parent |previous [-]

What’s the graphic novel?

EvanAnderson |root |parent [-]

I don't know. I'll ask her. She burns thru them and it may have already been returned to the library.

mkovach |next |previous [-]

’ve been following Adrian's Afga system series, great dive into the unknown.

Realistically, I would've stopped the moment BASIC worked, called it "good enough," and then gotten distracted attempting to write a Forth for it.

tonyedgecombe |root |parent [-]

Writing a Forth for hardware that originally ran PostScript would have been an interesting decision.

anthk |root |parent [-]

I'm running EForth under subleq right now (https://github.com/howerj/subleq)

lizardking |next |previous [-]

Looks roughly as smooth as it looked on my 25mhz 386

fipar |root |parent [-]

On my 33mhz (I'm almost, but not quite sure about the frequency) 486 SX (yeah ...) it ran OK until the levels where you'd get a lot of monsters. In those, I had to zoom in to the smallest possible screen size and even then it was barely acceptable.

So while the video is impressive and I couldn't do something like this myself, I was glad when I saw how bad it ran, as that computer of mine would a little bit more than 30yo today, so to have that beat by a 40yo printer controller would make me think I could have done something to have it run better back then!

egypturnash |next |previous [-]

I am faintly disappointed that "running Doom" did not involve printing out a series of frames at a hilariously low effective framerate, then taking the pile and using it as a flipbook.

I mean, sure, major props for kludging your own video generator in there, but...

Aardwolf |next |previous [-]

Now please do it on a Cray-1 from 1976!

peteforde |next |previous [-]

This is freaking awesome.

esafak |next |previous [-]

Agfa: now there's a name you don't see any more.

tonyedgecombe |root |parent [-]

There were so many companies in that sector back in the eighties and nineties. It seemed like every conglomerate had a division making printers.

esafak |root |parent [-]

Indeed. I once had a Star dot matrix printer. Amazingly they still make printers, among other things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Micronics

estomagordo |previous [-]

Now do Crysis

vardump |root |parent [-]

Whoever owns the rights for Crysis should open source as much as they can.

Just so that Crysis can one day run on a future computationally overpowered smart toaster.