Recent content by carlos12

I never noticed this, so I did a small test. I compiled a a 129 lines C file on an XT clone at 4.77 mhz. It took to compile: - 33 seconds on TC 2.01 - 50 seconds on TC++ 1.01 I guess many people just didn't notice it. It was still faster to compile than MS C (although fast as a turtle...

I have a Bondwell 34 (XT clone with 8088 at 4.77). It has a Hercules graphics card clone, which seems to be quite compatible wit the original. I inserted along with it an OAK OTI 037c, VGA hoping to have a dual monitor system. Unfortunately, only the Hercules one worked. Using MODE CO80 DOS...

Turbo C++ 1.0, which regarding real mode code is not very different to BC 3.0, still allows assembly meta commands, so you could write: asm .386 asm pushfd asm pop eax and it should compile right. It's a pitty Borland removed this feature from later versions as it may be useful...

The 8 Bit Guy did a delightful documentary about this topic a few years ago. I hope it answers some of your questions:

Adding to what daver2 already explained, you should also take into account that INC mem is 4 bytes long (5 if we add a segment modifier), as opposed to INC reg16 instructions, which are 1 byte long. On the 8086/88, every byte fetched from RAM takes 4 cycles, so you should count the 16 cycles...

I think that's a fascinating subject. At its time, as far as I can remember Amiga computers were perceived almost as a game console with a keyboard. Of course, they were able to run business software and they were used as graphic stations, but that's the general perception I felt at the time...

The latest official release of 86Box supports, at last without bugs, screen shaders. Also do DOXBox-x and PC-em. They come with a lot of shaders. The ones I like most, from what I tried, are CRT-geom and CRT-lottes-fast. They simulate the CRT curvature but, in my opinion it's a bit exaggerated...

I think MartyPC looks great, and I really admire it's a new development made from scratch, by a sole developer. Amazing! Unfortunately, I wasn't able to run it on my Windows 10 computer. It crashes before doing anything. For now, until a more mature version is released, I'll stick with 86Box...

In my case, I keep 3.30 for the sake of period accurateness and nostalgia, because, IIRC, it was the OS originally released with the PS/2 Model 30, and I keep it also for caution, in case I find an application or game that doesn't fit on RAM because of the extra ~25 Kb that 5.x takes...

IBM PC-DOS 3.30 installed on period hard disks; PC-DOS 5.0 installed on 2 Gb Compact Flash cards (XT-IDE/XT-CF Lite). Ocasionally using 2.10, loading from 5.25" drive, mostly for testing purposes. 2.x has the lowest RAM consumption. 3.30 takes a bit more RAM, and it's able to recognize drives...

Indistinguishable from the real thing... They kept us deceived all this time! How they dared?

Isn't the MDA a text only display adapter? No graphics at all will display, unless you found a way to hack the CRT to being able to display individual pixels, and anyway, the RAM of the MDA is too scarce to do anything. If doing a text only game, I think there would not be much problem even on...

Fortunately, the system is smart enough to automatically disable the internal MCGA by itself, so installing a VGA card is just plug and play. The 8503 is totally compatible with VGA cards as it's an analog monitor, at least up to 640x480 for graphics and 720x400 for text modes.

Yes, it does! I have the same model, mine I think it's earlier, made in UK '87 or '88, and put inside an early Sound Blaster 16 and it works flawless. Sound Blaster ISA 16 are easier to find and much cheaper than the 8 bit ones (if found...). As it was pointed before, another good update should...

Theoretically and if I'm not mistaken, the only graphic mode that an EGA card can display over an MDA monitor (such as the 5151) is mode 0Fh, 640x350, black and 3 shades of gray (green on this case). So my guess is this demo could be actually using mode 0Fh (maybe it detects the monitor, as it...