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Re: ATI Graphics Solution

Posted on 2019-06-01, 10:30

Not really sure what your point is. Could the PC have been designed better? I think everyone agrees on that. Of all the machines from the 70s and 80s, the PC is by far the least spectacular (which is why it was so easy to clone). But it is what it is. Sure, you could add clever DMA etc... make sort …

Re: The "12-bit" Sound Blaster 16 Myth

Posted on 2019-05-31, 23:17

Perhaps because, AFAICT, that price tag was not a common experience? Again, I don't recall ever seeing an SB Pro going for that much bread. Possibly because I bought it when it was top dog. Which it only was for a few months, because then the SB16 came around, taking its place as the 'semi- …

Re: ATI Graphics Solution

Posted on 2019-05-31, 22:22

Another problem with giving the VGA card DMA capabilities might be that it could saturate the bus, starving the CPU from RAM access and stalling it, making it not significantly faster than CPU-controlled transfer (especially once you take into account setting up the DMA transfer and initializing …

Re: ATI Graphics Solution

Posted on 2019-05-31, 22:00

I mean, that's my whole point here. Not how fast what we have is, and how to extract that, but how fast it could've been had IBM actually thought about it some more. They got the text mode and attributes right, just one more step was required for the graphics modes. I know it was a limitation of …

Re: The "12-bit" Sound Blaster 16 Myth

Posted on 2019-05-31, 21:45

They weren't cheap exactly, but they weren't unreasonably expensive, and definitely not priced (and to the best of my knowledge, never advertised to be) like a professional instrument of the time. I never said they were marketed as or priced as professional equipment (trust me, Roland MPU-401 + MT- …

Re: The "12-bit" Sound Blaster 16 Myth

Posted on 2019-05-31, 19:58

But I think reading too much into the "Pro" part of the name is probably not wise. I wouldn't make too many assumptions about me if I were you. I also got the SB Pro 2.0 kit with Voyetra Sequencer Plus "Pro" (ahem), and the MIDI cables, etc. etc. I think I paid (ok, I was a kid, so read: my dad …

Re: ATI Graphics Solution

Posted on 2019-05-31, 19:14

True, but then again if you are drawing sprites to VRAM you are doing it wrong. Well, how would you propose to do it on EGA/VGA? Also, ironically enough, the Amiga did have hardware sprites, but most games used so-called Blitter Objects (bobs) instead. Basically using the blitter to save and …

Re: ATI Graphics Solution

Posted on 2019-05-31, 18:55

I haven't looked at the code for DOOM, but I expect that uses the same tricks. Yes, I would expect it uses basically the same code for the walls and sprites (just higher resolution, better accuracy, and added lightmaps). The biggest difference would be in the floors and ceilings, which would …

Re: The "12-bit" Sound Blaster 16 Myth

Posted on 2019-05-31, 18:39

Cloudschatze wrote: That's with the filter on, mind you, which is the default setting. For higher-rate playback, it's recommended that the filter be completely disabled. I hope it can redeem itself without the filter... but I'm afraid this was not all just filter that we heard.

Re: The "12-bit" Sound Blaster 16 Myth

Posted on 2019-05-31, 18:35

If I mute the 0dB track and solo the -60 track, it's a hearing test, but it's there. My point was rather that when it's not distorted, and you hear some of the left channel bleed in the right channel, it effectively just makes the stereo image a bit smaller, but is otherwise not an issue (like how …

Re: The "12-bit" Sound Blaster 16 Myth

Posted on 2019-05-31, 17:54

Comparison recordings of the above: Sound Blaster Pro 2 Sound Blaster 16 I think especially that SB Pro 2 recording sums up just how much Creative ripped off their customers. I mean, even back in 1991, this was a completely horrible reproduction of a 44.1 kHz 8-bit mono PCM file. And considering …

Re: ATI Graphics Solution

Posted on 2019-05-31, 14:08

the point is Doom didnt use planar for the awesome bitplanes, it used planar because Carmack didnt like tearing. Hardly a pro planar addressing argument. It wasn't a pro-planar argument. It was an argument that apparently VGA had various shortcomings, requiring workarounds that gave up the One True …

Re: ATI Graphics Solution

Posted on 2019-05-31, 13:48

Scali: unchained 13h hurt Doom performance (unless selecting low detail, afaik doom draws 2 bitplanes at a time in low), its only advantage was V-sync with no tearing (double buffering). Funny how people try to explain this sort of stuff to me. Yes, obviously I know that there is some overhead to …

Re: ATI Graphics Solution

Posted on 2019-05-31, 13:37

I'm sorry, did I strike a nerve there? It was the Amiga comment, wasn't it? No, it's your typical fanboy thought-pattern. Apparently you're convinced that VGA is the One True Way(tm) for graphics, and anything else has to be inferior. You merely try to collect 'proof' to support your notion, rather …

Re: ATI Graphics Solution

Posted on 2019-05-31, 09:22

OK, so there is _one_ scenario where having individual bit per every pixel is useful. No, I gave one example. There are more, but it's more about understanding how to think in bitplanes. Apparently you are a graphics n00b, but are somehow convinced you're an expert, so you're not open to the …

Re: ATI Graphics Solution

Posted on 2019-05-30, 21:49

That's another beef I have with PC video cards. Bitplane modes. If they had to fit the VRAM into a smaller window below 1MB, why not use simple banked approach. For various 2d effects, bitplanes are actually far easier to work with. The Commodore Amiga also uses a bitplane-based approach, albeit …

Re: ATI Graphics Solution

Posted on 2019-05-30, 21:10

On EGA you have 2 bits per each color channel and since we have 3 channels that's 6 bit total so 64 combinations. It's almost the same system (in the sense it uses same connector and digital outputs) but so much better. Thing is that this requires a more complicated circuit. With CGA, the bits in …

Re: ATI Graphics Solution

Posted on 2019-05-30, 20:44

Anyway, I'm not surprised that Plantronics and similar cards had drivers out for widely used programs; however my impression is that early on, most business users would've had monochrome displays. People made much of the fact that the 9x14 text was much clearer, that monitors without a shadow-mask …

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