5 ms·

David Murray, the 8 Bit Guy on Youtube, he doesn't have the best delivery but he's a fascinating watch with a lot of his videos. His favorite is the C64 and has

by burnte 8y ago

David Murray, the 8 Bit Guy on Youtube, he doesn't have the best delivery but he's a fascinating watch with a lot of his videos. His favorite is the C64 and has done some amazing videos about the hardware and history, etc, and has talked about how various tricks like this work. It was an amazingly capable machine, and the folks who exploited every little aspect were/are clever as hell.

jacquesm 8y ago
> It was an amazingly capable machine, and the folks who exploited every little aspect were/are clever as hell. If you had been alive and busy with computer programming back in the day you too would have been clever as hell. It was the only way you'd get anything done and if there is one thing that will bring out the hacker in people it is a bunch of unreasonable constraints and a job that needs to be done anyway.
- wolco 8y ago
  I feel like we moved away from clever into this copy this exact way culture.
- burnte 8y ago
  I had a hand-me-down TRS 80 Model 100 rather than a C64. Got my first "IBM clone" PC in 1990 or 1991 IIRC. Totally missed out on the other 8bit micros, but I learned a hell of a lot with that Model 100. :)
- panic 8y ago
  The great thing about the C64 is that it never changes. It's the same hardware as it was last year, and it'll be the same hardware next year. Modern systems have plenty of unreasonable constraints, but the foundations are always shifting. How many cool web hacks from 5 or 10 years ago will run unmodified on a modern web browser?
  - digi_owl 8y ago
    Yeah, i just pulled up a list of RPi variants to check and it has been releasing new generation Bs every 2 years or so. In those years it has gone from a 700mhz single core ARM11, to a 1.4ghz quad core Cortex A53. The c64 in contrast stayed largely fixed for over 2 decades!
  - fractallyte 8y ago
    The various board revisions introduced some changes. Particularly notable were the bug fixes to the original 326298 board. We could never get certain games/demos to work on our early C64. I still look wistfully at Gauntlet...
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    You just described why game developers prefer to target consoles.
- cromwellian 8y ago
  Yup, constraint = hack/freedom is one of the paradoxes as long as there are hidden degrees of freedom that can break the constraints. Here’s some old c64 intros I did, including a trick of bank switching to fake z ordering of fonts and sprite scs rasters, as well as using FLD to stabilize rasters in the presence of moving sprites in both PAL/NTSC modes. https://youtu.be/aViXXbUg_yU https://youtu.be/aViXXbUg_yU
  - digi_owl 8y ago
    I think it may be less "constraint" and more "fixed platform". Meaning that every C64 was like very other C64, so you knew what you had to work with on the hardware side. You could see this with consoles as well, as the games steadily improved as developers learned how to push that fixed hardware around (though the cartridge ones often allowed in-cart chips to assist). I guess we have gotten so incredibly used to either being able upgrade piecemeal, or simply replace wholesale every few years, that having a steady set of hardware to explore and learn has become "foreign" in a way. Compare and contrast the C64 and say the RPi. the former was more or less steady for 24 years, while the latter have been releasing beefier variants every 2 years or so.
    - vardump 8y ago
      > Meaning that every C64 was like very other C64, so you knew what you had to work with on the hardware side. Well, other than: 1) PAL vs NTSC systems. True compatibility breaker. 2) Two different versions of SID sound chips (and every SID being more or less unique) 3) Different VIC-II versions (or at least some chips where VSP (variable screen positioning, a fast method for horizontal scrolling) works and some where it doesn't)).
- userbinator 8y ago
  A lot of demo effects are almost like magic tricks --- before you understand how they're done, they seem like impossible magic; but once you do, you think "that's so simple, why didn't I think of that?" Animation by essentially "panning" inside a larger pre-rendered image is one of those tricks: http://norecess.cpcscene.net/the-elders-scrollers.html http://norecess.cpcscene.net/the-elders-scrollers.html
  - bostik 8y ago
    Old-school demos have another common trait with magic. Like the best stage magic, you know you are being fooled - but even after seeing how the trick is done, you remain amazed by it. The best one I have seen: Cubase-64 [0] 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=artEQkifGG0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=artEQkifGG0
  - digi_owl 8y ago
    > Animation by essentially "panning" inside a larger pre-rendered image is one of those tricks Hand animated cartoons would often used that trick as well. The anime Bubblegum Crisis used a massive cityscape painting for their panning shots.
  - StavrosK 8y ago
    I'm not so sure how simple the example you mentioned is. I've seen it many times and I'm still not sure how I would generate the source image.
- bnastic 8y ago
  > If you had been alive and busy with computer programming back in the day you too would have been clever as hell. Don’t underestimate the power of internet today and the ease of obtaining information - that certainly was not the case in the ‘80s. Unless you were close to demo groups you were left with two choices: a) reverse engineer the code (good old “Monitor 49152”), or b) give up
  - keyle 8y ago
    That's true. With no internet and only a crappy book, my use of the ZX 80 was pretty poor compared to what I would have mentally capable of doing, if I had access to further knowledge.
    - wiz21c 8y ago
      Cleverness could express itself in the way you actually gathered documentation... Back in those days, it was really tough to get any. For example, I was out of the scene. So I decided to create a disk magazine to talk bout the scene, hopefully getting in contact with it. That's exactly what happened and a s a result of that, I got access to one marvelous piece of software I couldn't write by himself : a MOD player (included with SoundBlaster DMA access which was very hard to code)...
    - dwd 8y ago
      This http://www.classiccmp.org/cini/pdf/Commodore/C64%20Programmer%27s%20Reference%20Guide.pdf http://www.classiccmp.org/cini/pdf/Commodore/C64%20Programme... I still have my copy after all these years.
  - Angostura 8y ago
    There were a ton of good hobbyist magazine back in the day, many of which dedicated a page or two to low-level hackery
    - jacquesm 8y ago
      I just read the little excerpt from a newspaper in the article about the genesis of the transistor and it struck me that the technical details in those paragraphs were way above what an audience of today would ever be exposed to from a technical level.
bitwize 8y ago
I like his delivery. He speaks clearly, goes over the main points in a slow, methodical, easy to understand manner -- and best of all, doesn't have generic YouTuber, "WHAT'S UP GUYS THIS IS DROWYOSHI3288 BACK WITH ANOTHER VIDEO" type presentation.
- burnte 8y ago
  Oh, yes, he's lightyears ahead of annoying youtubers. I'd just love to give him a couple of pointers. But I still subscribe, he's great.
kgwxd 8y ago
"he doesn't have the best delivery" I think he is very good at keeping the content interesting. I never get the urge to fast-forward and I've got the attention span of a 2 year old with ADD.

by burnte 8y ago

jacquesm 8y ago

> It was an amazingly capable machine, and the folks who exploited every little aspect were/are clever as hell. If you had been alive and busy with computer programming back in the day you too would have been clever as hell. It was the only way you'd get anything done and if there is one thing that will bring out the hacker in people it is a bunch of unreasonable constraints and a job that needs to be done anyway.

wolco 8y ago
I feel like we moved away from clever into this copy this exact way culture.
burnte 8y ago
I had a hand-me-down TRS 80 Model 100 rather than a C64. Got my first "IBM clone" PC in 1990 or 1991 IIRC. Totally missed out on the other 8bit micros, but I learned a hell of a lot with that Model 100. :)
panic 8y ago
The great thing about the C64 is that it never changes. It's the same hardware as it was last year, and it'll be the same hardware next year. Modern systems have plenty of unreasonable constraints, but the foundations are always shifting. How many cool web hacks from 5 or 10 years ago will run unmodified on a modern web browser?
- digi_owl 8y ago
  Yeah, i just pulled up a list of RPi variants to check and it has been releasing new generation Bs every 2 years or so. In those years it has gone from a 700mhz single core ARM11, to a 1.4ghz quad core Cortex A53. The c64 in contrast stayed largely fixed for over 2 decades!
- fractallyte 8y ago
  The various board revisions introduced some changes. Particularly notable were the bug fixes to the original 326298 board. We could never get certain games/demos to work on our early C64. I still look wistfully at Gauntlet...
- pjmlp 8y ago
  You just described why game developers prefer to target consoles.
cromwellian 8y ago
Yup, constraint = hack/freedom is one of the paradoxes as long as there are hidden degrees of freedom that can break the constraints. Here’s some old c64 intros I did, including a trick of bank switching to fake z ordering of fonts and sprite scs rasters, as well as using FLD to stabilize rasters in the presence of moving sprites in both PAL/NTSC modes. https://youtu.be/aViXXbUg_yU https://youtu.be/aViXXbUg_yU
- digi_owl 8y ago
  I think it may be less "constraint" and more "fixed platform". Meaning that every C64 was like very other C64, so you knew what you had to work with on the hardware side. You could see this with consoles as well, as the games steadily improved as developers learned how to push that fixed hardware around (though the cartridge ones often allowed in-cart chips to assist). I guess we have gotten so incredibly used to either being able upgrade piecemeal, or simply replace wholesale every few years, that having a steady set of hardware to explore and learn has become "foreign" in a way. Compare and contrast the C64 and say the RPi. the former was more or less steady for 24 years, while the latter have been releasing beefier variants every 2 years or so.
  - vardump 8y ago
    > Meaning that every C64 was like very other C64, so you knew what you had to work with on the hardware side. Well, other than: 1) PAL vs NTSC systems. True compatibility breaker. 2) Two different versions of SID sound chips (and every SID being more or less unique) 3) Different VIC-II versions (or at least some chips where VSP (variable screen positioning, a fast method for horizontal scrolling) works and some where it doesn't)).
userbinator 8y ago
A lot of demo effects are almost like magic tricks --- before you understand how they're done, they seem like impossible magic; but once you do, you think "that's so simple, why didn't I think of that?" Animation by essentially "panning" inside a larger pre-rendered image is one of those tricks: http://norecess.cpcscene.net/the-elders-scrollers.html http://norecess.cpcscene.net/the-elders-scrollers.html
- bostik 8y ago
  Old-school demos have another common trait with magic. Like the best stage magic, you know you are being fooled - but even after seeing how the trick is done, you remain amazed by it. The best one I have seen: Cubase-64 [0] 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=artEQkifGG0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=artEQkifGG0
- digi_owl 8y ago
  > Animation by essentially "panning" inside a larger pre-rendered image is one of those tricks Hand animated cartoons would often used that trick as well. The anime Bubblegum Crisis used a massive cityscape painting for their panning shots.
- StavrosK 8y ago
  I'm not so sure how simple the example you mentioned is. I've seen it many times and I'm still not sure how I would generate the source image.
bnastic 8y ago
> If you had been alive and busy with computer programming back in the day you too would have been clever as hell. Don’t underestimate the power of internet today and the ease of obtaining information - that certainly was not the case in the ‘80s. Unless you were close to demo groups you were left with two choices: a) reverse engineer the code (good old “Monitor 49152”), or b) give up
- keyle 8y ago
  That's true. With no internet and only a crappy book, my use of the ZX 80 was pretty poor compared to what I would have mentally capable of doing, if I had access to further knowledge.
  - wiz21c 8y ago
    Cleverness could express itself in the way you actually gathered documentation... Back in those days, it was really tough to get any. For example, I was out of the scene. So I decided to create a disk magazine to talk bout the scene, hopefully getting in contact with it. That's exactly what happened and a s a result of that, I got access to one marvelous piece of software I couldn't write by himself : a MOD player (included with SoundBlaster DMA access which was very hard to code)...
  - dwd 8y ago
    This http://www.classiccmp.org/cini/pdf/Commodore/C64%20Programmer%27s%20Reference%20Guide.pdf http://www.classiccmp.org/cini/pdf/Commodore/C64%20Programme... I still have my copy after all these years.
- Angostura 8y ago
  There were a ton of good hobbyist magazine back in the day, many of which dedicated a page or two to low-level hackery
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    I just read the little excerpt from a newspaper in the article about the genesis of the transistor and it struck me that the technical details in those paragraphs were way above what an audience of today would ever be exposed to from a technical level.

bitwize 8y ago

I like his delivery. He speaks clearly, goes over the main points in a slow, methodical, easy to understand manner -- and best of all, doesn't have generic YouTuber, "WHAT'S UP GUYS THIS IS DROWYOSHI3288 BACK WITH ANOTHER VIDEO" type presentation.

burnte 8y ago
Oh, yes, he's lightyears ahead of annoying youtubers. I'd just love to give him a couple of pointers. But I still subscribe, he's great.

kgwxd 8y ago

"he doesn't have the best delivery" I think he is very good at keeping the content interesting. I never get the urge to fast-forward and I've got the attention span of a 2 year old with ADD.