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First post, by dr.zeissler

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Hi,

there are lot's of remakes of old 68K Amiga/Atari Intros/Cracktros. Here is an interesting collectors-site: http://cyberpingui.free.fr/realpcremakes.php

I think there is a very demanding middleware used to get these things to work. What I really like about them is, that they are really stutterfree and that is VERY rare on the PC. But there are bad things too. One is that they a very demanding. A PIII/600 with onboard gpu (intel815e) cannot handle them in proper speed (60fps). If the problem is the CPU power or the GPU power is not analyzed yet. Interesting thing is that Win9x and DX9 does not work, while Win2k and DX9 works with them. I am questioning if this is due to the featureset of the graphics-driver or is at a package of dll's that make them work on Win2k and not under Win9x.
If I want to watch them I need to turn on my NX6125 Laptop or a P4 with GF6200 and Win2k. There are only a view that do work with a Celeron 300 Mhz and below, even with Win95. They have changed or implemented some kind of middleware that draws power like hell.

You just should keep in mind that they worked 100% OK on a 7Mhz 68K! and now you need 1.000 times faster machine to get them work stutterfree again. 🙁

Greetings
Doc

Admin edit. Attachments that trigger antivirus scanners are a NO go, because safebrowsing lists will block access to vogons and it is a pain to get resolved

Retro-Gamer 😀 ...on different machines

Reply 1 of 7, by Cyberdyne

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My antivirus is going ape shit right now!

I am aroused about any X86 motherboard that has full functional ISA slot. I think i have problem. Not really into that original (Turbo) XT,286,386 and CGA/EGA stuff. So just a DOS nut.

Reply 3 of 7, by Scali

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dr.zeissler wrote:

You just should keep in mind that they worked 100% OK on a 7Mhz 68K! and now you need 1.000 times faster machine to get them work stutterfree again. 🙁

The magic of the Amiga was in the chipset, not the CPU.
Most effects used in such demos are done with the copper and blitter.
A PC doesn't have those, so you need to emulate those on CPU somehow, which is generally much slower.
I don't know how they did these remakes exactly, but if it's just an Amiga emulator inside the exe, then yes, you'll need a very fast CPU indeed.
If they re-coded the entire effects, then well, they probably weren't very good coders. Most Amiga-stuff can be done on a 486DX2-66 with a VLB SVGA card and some clever coding.

http://scalibq.wordpress.com/just-keeping-it- … ro-programming/

Reply 4 of 7, by dr.zeissler

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Thx scali. I don't think there is an amiga-emulator inside these small files. I would "build" them by myself so that they run on my machines, if I had the sources and the tools. (perhaps older versions of that tools, so they do run on my Win95 dx7 machine. They tend to use some features in hardware that are not dx9 related. e.g. they do run on a i865gv chipset under win2k with only dx7 installed. they use some features of the chipsset-gfx. I read that the i865gv has some dx9 effects in hardware. if I use a real dx7 card, then I have to upgrade to dx9 to make them run...interesting, but perhaps only a reason of the "test-scattering".

Greetings
Doc

PS: I knew about copper and blitter but I did not expect these effects to require so much horsepower. Keep in mind we are talking mostly about 320x200 pixels and I need a >1Ghz machine to get these things locked 60fps.

Retro-Gamer 😀 ...on different machines

Reply 6 of 7, by dr.zeissler

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Here is another interesting archive with thousands of intros/cracktros http://hardcode.untergrund.net
and keep in mind that:

Antivirus note: archive contains thousands of executable files, so it's recommended to disable antivirus software while downloading and unpacking.
Most of antiviruses detects some threats in the package - these alerts are false, and they are caused by sophisticated compression methods applied for many intros.

It's the same here.

Retro-Gamer 😀 ...on different machines

Reply 7 of 7, by Qbix

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I have removed the attachments.
If it triggers antivirus, please do not upload it to the board. It will get the forum on blacklists (It has happened a few times before).

Water flows down the stream
How to ask questions the smart way!