|
madpanda posted:My XT came with a few of these These days, you'll need that much paper just for the licensing agreements.
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2015 22:46
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 16, 2024 06:31 |
|
|
Code Jockey posted:This rules. I came of age right at the dawn of object-oriented programming being a thing. C++ wasn't really widespread so it mostly LISP and Prolog. Objects broke my head (at the time) the way pointers never did. So I veered and went into networking which lead to network security which lead into writing code again (in assembly calls mostly), but mostly throw-away stuff to break poo poo which lead to python (but not perl, gently caress perl) and suddenly objects made sense. While the whole concept of creating nothing from the ether like developers do still has an appeal, I wouldn't trade changing my career trajectory due to being a dumb-head for anything. I've moved on from security to a whole new world of designing and implementing back-end services and processes. Plus being in on the early days of "what will this do" programming on personal computers gave me a good fundamental understanding of how those mystery boxes do what they do (and how to break them). But it all started with a VIC-20 I got on my 12th birthday.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2015 22:52
|
|
|
spog posted:These days, you'll need that much paper just for the licensing agreements. Once upon a time … 
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2015 23:14
|
|
|
Yeah - 2400 bps was delivered in 1986 for the low, low price of $350. It was my only Christmas present that year.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2015 02:51
|
|
|
2400 was all you needed to play Legend of the Red Dragon! Or Barren Realms Elite. I remember a friend getting some huge amount of ram for the time, like maybe a MB or so, and was really exited about running Doom off it. He was extremely disappointed when It didn't run super good, just normal.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2015 06:14
|
|
|
Pham Nuwen posted:This, perhaps? During the Loma Prieta quake (which was posted live on USENET) somebody at DECWRL commented that his entire 10-foot shelf of DEC manuals nearly fell on his head, and he was thinking "God, I'm going to be the first person ever killed by documentation."
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2015 06:22
|
|
|
twistedmentat posted:2400 was all you needed to play Legend of the Red Dragon! Or Barren Realms Elite. For some reason this reminded me how amazing things looked when I first began to run games in 640x480. So crisp! So many pixels! I remember for a while too that 1024x768 was the super-high-resolution that only the best of the best graphics cards could run things at.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2015 07:04
|
|
|
Code Jockey posted:For some reason this reminded me how amazing things looked when I first began to run games in 640x480. So crisp! So many pixels! I remember having to choose between 800x600 with 16 bit color or 1024x768 with 8 bit color in Win95.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2015 07:30
|
|
|
madpanda posted:My XT came with a few of these That's beautiful. I lust for those books.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2015 08:11
|
|
|
Code Jockey posted:For some reason this reminded me how amazing things looked when I first began to run games in 640x480. So crisp! So many pixels! I remember the first time I tried to run something in 1024x768, and it was KOTOR. I didn't get the point of this "resolution" thing, when it made the menus and icons so small! 
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2015 10:17
|
|
|
Arsenic Lupin posted:During the Loma Prieta quake (which was posted live on USENET) somebody at DECWRL commented that his entire 10-foot shelf of DEC manuals nearly fell on his head, and he was thinking "God, I'm going to be the first person ever killed by documentation." I worked at a software store in L.A. and the wall behind the cashwrap had high plastic shelves with single copies of things like DBASE IV on them. I was there for a couple of earthquakes and definitely stepped away from that drat wall. 
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2015 10:26
|
|
|
Aristophanes posted:I remember the first time I tried to run something in 1024x768, and it was KOTOR. I didn't get the point of this "resolution" thing, when it made the menus and icons so small! Way back when I had a a Saturday job at a PC place, small shop that a great guy ran and he built me my first PC out of 'bits' - I had Apple Macs at the time, mainly for college work. I didn't realise it at the time but looking back it was a loving monster, it had 2 x Voodoo 2 cards in it and a Nvidia TNT with about 200 MB RAM, this was when Quake 2 was out. So I never had anything run at less than MAX EVERYTHING, I pretty much saw PC games as console games, install them and run them... Pure dumb luck on my part, me and the guy are still really good mates 
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2015 14:05
|
|
|
peter gabriel posted:Way back when I had a a Saturday job at a PC place, small shop that a great guy ran and he built me my first PC out of 'bits' - I had Apple Macs at the time, mainly for college work. Jesus, that must've been expensive. I was so stoked when I got a Voodoo2 as an xmas present. Playing Quake in software mode with a 4 MB S3 ViRGE card wasn't a grand experience. And the textures! So smooth!
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2015 14:11
|
|
|
mng posted:Jesus, that must've been expensive. Ahhh Glide Vs D3D, I remember it well, Voodoo was smoother TNT had more colour depth, voodoo used 16 million Vs TNT 32 million I think? The dude would literally go to the suppliers and unload all the bits he got and pull out a box for me, I had no clue at the time but yeah, that was one hell of a PC. He even got me a 17 inch monitor, surround sound (I think only the original Unreal used it at the time) CD Writer and all that good stuff. It took about a month or so, then he just gave it me, I loved that thing 
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2015 14:15
|
|
|
I remember the first game I ever played on my PC with hardware rendering when I got my 3dfx Voodoo 1: Microsoft Outwars. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFJ2OcXLXI4 I was completely blow away by how much better a game could look compared to software rendering. Gone were the rough sanding looking textures and edges. Quake/TF1 would have been my first 3d game, but I had to download GLQuake first and it took a while on my 28.8.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2015 14:25
|
|
|
peter gabriel posted:Ahhh Glide Vs D3D, I remember it well, Voodoo was smoother TNT had more colour depth, voodoo used 16 million Vs TNT 32 million I think? The TNT wasn't really worth it back in the day, it was out-performed by the Voodoo2 on most games and the visual quality improvement wasn't all that great in the grand scheme of things. Wasn't worth the performance hit in any case. The TNT 2 was the thing that broke through and the Geforce 256 was the nail in the coffin.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2015 14:39
|
|
|
Didn't Glide cut a a ton of corners to get the performance it had though?
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2015 15:03
|
|
|
Collateral Damage posted:Didn't Glide cut a a ton of corners to get the performance it had though? GLide was a subset of OpenGL, and implemented only the commands used by GLQuake and only in the way GLQuake used them, purely to demonstrate the ability to do real time 3D on consumer hardware. It didn't really cut many corners, it was just so limited in what it was designed to do that everything that used it ended up looking same-y. Later revisions helped a lot with this.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2015 15:20
|
|
|
SwissCM posted:The TNT wasn't really worth it back in the day, it was out-performed by the Voodoo2 on most games and the visual quality improvement wasn't all that great in the grand scheme of things. Wasn't worth the performance hit in any case. Oh poo poo, it was a TNT 2 sorry! You had glide for Unreal and D3D for Quake 3 as I remember, although fuckery could change this with glidewrapper etc ha ha, oh god the memories
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2015 15:26
|
|
|
twistedmentat posted:2400 was all you needed to play Legend of the Red Dragon! Or Barren Realms Elite. My dad's work computer at home had I think 80 MB (which was insane for the time) and OS/2 (which actually made it really easy to get enough free base memory to run games because it came with a bunch of set-up files for specific games) and I never realized how lucky I was when everyone else at school was talking about how badly Doom ran. 0dB posted:That's beautiful. I lust for those books. Guide to Operations doesn't say Model 286 so it's the poo poo XT documentation  
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2015 15:35
|
|
|
peter gabriel posted:Oh poo poo, it was a TNT 2 sorry! Quake 3 was OpenGL all the way (gotta remember, even Wolfenstein: The New Order is OpenGL. Carmack loves his open standards.) EDIT: Also from what I remember, there were Glide wrappers released at that time that allowed good performance that rivaled the 3DFX. SCheeseman has a new favorite as of 15:39 on Feb 10, 2015 |
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2015 15:35
|
|
|
SwissCM posted:Quake 3 was OpenGL all the way (gotta remember, even Wolfenstein: The New Order is OpenGL. Carmack loves his open standards.) My memory sucks I guess, sorry! I remember everyone was obsessed with colour depth back then, looking back I think it was graphics card warrior stuff
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2015 15:39
|
|
|
peter gabriel posted:My memory sucks I guess, sorry! 3DFX was the right choice until suddenly it wasn't. It was a quick change. It's funny to think that at one point that nvidia was the underdog.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2015 15:41
|
|
|
SwissCM posted:3DFX was the right choice until suddenly it wasn't. It was a quick change. It's funny to think that at one point that nvidia was the underdog. I remember that well, 3DFX just destroyed everything for a while, but you did need a '2D card' as well and I remember that unravelling for them with crap like the Voodoo Banshee  Nobody wanted the Voodoo 4 at all, we could not sell them. I guess faced with the choice of a voodoo 3 (no '2D' card needed, these were all in one) or a TNT 2, then more importantly a Geforce people just dropped 3DFX and sadly, quite rightly so. They couldn't keep up and were dearer. Also ATI joined in at this point and their cards were great value and getting better all the time. People were literally obsessed with the thickness of the pass through cables on Voodoo 2s and stuff like that. We used to get a fair few PCs in where 'the voodoo is hosed' when what they had done is connect the pass through cable back onto the same card, fun times. It was a cool time but a strange time, you had some games with 'Requires POWER VR' on the box. peter gabriel has a new favorite as of 15:56 on Feb 10, 2015 |
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2015 15:53
|
|
|
Anyone else use the old N64 emulator that used Glide? UltraHLE?
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2015 15:59
|
|
|
SwissCM posted:3DFX was the right choice until suddenly it wasn't. It was a quick change. It's funny to think that at one point that nvidia was the underdog. Yeah. Things are a little more stable now, but it was a big deal when a single TNT2 could beat dual voodoo2s. Wasted too much of my time reading about video cards I'd never be able to afford. Especially since I had a mac at the time.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2015 16:08
|
|
|
Last Chance posted:Anyone else use the old N64 emulator that used Glide? UltraHLE? Yeah and then I remember there being nothing better for years and years, have I got that right? Like, people were playing current N64 games on it, it was very odd, I was a bit freaked out by that at the time, I recall CDs with tens of games on them while they were still retailing for £50 or whatever
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2015 16:16
|
|
|
I sold someone my Geforce 2MX and went back to the Voodoo 3 for a while, IIRC. It might be relevant to the story that I had the apparently fatal combination of a Via chipset, a soundblaster Live, two IDE drives, AMD CPU, and the GF2MX. Brutally unstable. What's more odd is that I later replaced it with a PowerVR Kyro 2. It was ... actually quite decent, apart from some driver niggles. It was almost as fast as a much more expensive Geforce2, and probably the last competitive GPU you could buy that wasn't from ati/nvidia. PowerVR gave up and moved to licensing out designs for embedded devices after the Kyro 2. They're still alive, creating problems for driver writers everywhere and powering rather a lot of different things - like all iPads and iPhones, plus a whole bunch of Android devices and a couple of generations of intel embedded GPUs (with almost no linux support, unlike intel's inhouse designs). No PCIe cards on the horizon, though. Computer viking has a new favorite as of 16:36 on Feb 10, 2015 |
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2015 16:29
|
|
|
I had a Creative Geforce 2MX for a while that was a well known card to where I worked because it was a Geforce 2 that had been gimped somehow and people could ungimp them or something. The card I had most love for was the ATI 9800 Pro Gold, man that thing lasted ages http://www.cnet.com/products/ati-radeon-9800-pro-128mb-agp/specs/ peter gabriel has a new favorite as of 16:42 on Feb 10, 2015 |
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2015 16:39
|
|
|
I went straight from a Riva TNT to a Geforce Ti4200 128MB, which was one hell of leap.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2015 19:41
|
|
|
I had a TNT2 and a Matrox Mystique. I remember connecting my video cards with an external VGA cable or something in order to do a janky SLI back in the day. And then I remember getting a GeForce card for the first time. The game that really stands out in my memory as being a hardware hog was Everquest. It required a card that could do realtime T&L so I had to upgrade, and then when the Luclin expansion came out, it required like a whole 500Mb of RAM in order to load all the new character models at once. I was like, 500! Who has that?! I think I had like 200mb tops. I also remember installing games like XCOM and some flight sims and doom and stuff across like 20 floppy discs, and then seeing games like Everquest require several hundred MB of hard disk space was mind blowing.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2015 19:48
|
|
|
Oh maaaaan Matrox. I had a Matrox TV-output card and it was incredible. CRT blurring really went a long way to making low-resolution PC games look good. Well, good for the time. I loved that card to death. I thought I was just so cool, dragging my PC into the living room and hooking it up to the 26"-or-so CRT TV we had.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2015 21:09
|
|
|
I used to sell about 100 Geforces a week and about 6 Matrox's per year, it was always a nice surprise when someone wanted one! I remember the DVD cards we used to sell, they were called Hollywood something or other? This was when I was the top sales dude for the leading retailer in the UK at the time, I never thought about it back then but for over a year I was literally the best PC parts salesman in the UK  I used to sell to the Govt, Huge companies, the lot. Good times but lovely as well. I have forgotten a lot of it now but I used to know about every single thing out back then pretty much inside out.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2015 21:31
|
|
|
In 1998 Kingpin Life of Crime demo was released. All 109MB of it. We were aghast at its size.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2015 21:54
|
|
|
peter gabriel posted:Yeah and then I remember there being nothing better for years and years, have I got that right? Yeah the N64 stands out to me as the platform that had the best emulation while the platform was still current (though I guess the Wii was the same?). And indeed, UltraHLE was the best for quite a while. I remember putting my old Voodoo2 in my Pentium 3 to be able to play GoldenEye on it. Later Project64 came to be the best emu though. There was also this other N64 emulator Corn or something, only Mario 64 worked on it, but it did so well enough I could play it on my P166-MMX.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2015 21:55
|
|
|
peter gabriel posted:I remember the DVD cards we used to sell, they were called Hollywood something or other? They were essentially a hardware MPEG decoder. The king poo poo thing to do was get one running on Linux, and use it to watch the Matrix.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2015 22:37
|
|
|
Humbug Scoolbus posted:In 1998 Kingpin Life of Crime demo was released. All 109MB of it. We were aghast at its size. It took me all night long to download the Quake demo split into 1.4 meg images. That was some of the worst OH GOD MOVE PROGRESS BAR MOVE torture I've ever experienced, and it was so, so worth it. blugu64 posted:They were essentially a hardware MPEG decoder. The king poo poo thing to do was get one running on Linux, and use it to watch the Matrix. I just wanted to scream NEEEEEEERD at my screen, but honestly, this would have felt pretty cool back in the day.  I didn't get into Linux until some early version of Mandrake. I remember when I worked at Staples we sold it in retail box form, alongside Redhat. I assume the real thing we sold was the service contract for it, since as far as I know both were always free. e. Speaking of Quake, I still remember how cool it was the first time I saw Quake with transparent water.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2015 22:49
|
|
|
Code Jockey posted:I didn't get into Linux until some early version of Mandrake. I remember when I worked at Staples we sold it in retail box form, alongside Redhat. I assume the real thing we sold was the service contract for it, since as far as I know both were always free. No, it was just such a pain in the rear end to download an ISO over a loving modem that you'd pay for the convenience... I know I did. I don't remember getting poo poo for support with my Redhat box. I later paid $15 or something for a stack of Debian CDs burned by some random dude and labeled with a sharpie... it was weird, but he was listed on the Debian website as a CD distributor, and he was the cheapest, and it all worked, so whatever.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2015 23:00
|
|
|
High Protein posted:Yeah the N64 stands out to me as the platform that had the best emulation while the platform was still current (though I guess the Wii was the same?). And indeed, UltraHLE was the best for quite a while. I remember putting my old Voodoo2 in my Pentium 3 to be able to play GoldenEye on it. Later Project64 came to be the best emu though. I definitely remember seeing Ocarina Of Time in 1024 x 768 while my actual N64 owning buddy cried tears of jealousy blugu64 posted:They were essentially a hardware MPEG decoder. The king poo poo thing to do was get one running on Linux, and use it to watch the Matrix. A weekly occurrence at work at the time was seeing one of the tech support nerds upset because the film he spent 48 hours encoding had sound that was out of sync by a couple of seconds
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2015 23:06
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 16, 2024 06:31 |
|
|
It took me like a week of trying to download those linux ISOs overnight in the 90s over dialup before it finally succeeded without some problem. I had just paid around $500 for a CD burner and blank CD-Rs were $9.99 each if I recall correctly, getting that ISO finally burnt successfully was quite an achievement. Then I installed it and of course nothing worked at all because drivers. At some point later I got that lovely Wired CueCat thing working on linux and that was my peak accomplishment when it came to wasting time on lovely technologies for no reason. And then the CueCat site got hacked and they sent me a $10 gift certificate to Radio Shack to make up for that. Pryor on Fire has a new favorite as of 23:16 on Feb 10, 2015 |
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2015 23:13
|
|
