We ran Doom on a 40 year old printer controller (Agfa Compugraphic 9000PS) [video] (youtube.com)
50 points by zdw 4 days ago
EvanAnderson 5 hours ago
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 3 hours ago
The pregnancy test had altered innards. So it was fake.
EvanAnderson 3 hours ago
Sadness for that, and for my inability to read in-depth.
anthk an hour ago
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 3 hours ago
What’s the graphic novel?
EvanAnderson 3 hours ago
I don't know. I'll ask her. She burns thru them and it may have already been returned to the library.
mkovach 4 hours ago
’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 3 hours ago
Writing a Forth for hardware that originally ran PostScript would have been an interesting decision.
anthk an hour ago
I'm running EForth under subleq right now (https://github.com/howerj/subleq)
lizardking 3 hours ago
Looks roughly as smooth as it looked on my 25mhz 386
fipar an hour ago
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 2 hours ago
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 an hour ago
Now please do it on a Cray-1 from 1976!
peteforde 5 hours ago
This is freaking awesome.
esafak 4 hours ago
Agfa: now there's a name you don't see any more.
tonyedgecombe 3 hours ago
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 an hour ago
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 5 hours ago
Now do Crysis
vardump 20 minutes ago
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.