5 ms·

That honestly sounds amazing. Imagine booting into something like a grub menu that's just a list of classic games.

by chaps 6mo ago

queuebert 6mo ago
I would guess a modern BIOS chip is as powerful as an NES, right?
- fluoridation 6mo ago
  What do you mean by "BIOS chip"? Like, the flash memory that stores the motherboard's firmware? I don't think that contains any processing elements.
  - sedatk 6mo ago
    BIOS can only manage VESA which is much much slower than the capabilities of a modern GPU, so they might have meant graphical performance in regards to that.
    - jasomill 6mo ago
      VESA BIOS Extensions support direct framebuffer access in protected mode, and I don't imagine the lack of accelerated 2D operations would be a practical bottleneck when implementing NES-style graphics on modern PCs. UEFI GOP additionally supports accelerated bitblt, but again YAGNI for 2D game performance at reasonable framerates on a modern PC.
- snazz 6mo ago
  You can do substantially more in UEFI than NES-level games. (See https://uefi.org/specs/UEFI/2.9_A/12_Protocols_Console_Support.html#graphics-output-protocol https://uefi.org/specs/UEFI/2.9_A/12_Protocols_Console_Suppo...)
Xirdus 6mo ago
I basically had this setup back in the day. I don't really know how I ended up with it, I was 7 at the time and none of it was intentional - but my bootloader had two entries: I could boot into Windows 98, or I could boot into Worms.
- Dwedit 6mo ago
  It's a similar idea, but that's a DOS menu. At the point when the menu appears, MS-DOS 7.1 has already been loaded.
  - tetrisgm 6mo ago
    Stupid question but... would bundling the binary with an ASM port of something that could run this technically make it possible to run without the OS? I realize this is basically doing docker for DOS games and incredibly stupid, I'm just curious about the thought experiment
    - Xirdus 6mo ago
      Well, the "ASM port of something that could run this" would be the OS...
      - tetrisgm 6mo ago
        Right. I guess I mean like an app specific OS haha
      - ahartmetz 6mo ago
        Possibly stripped down to only support that game, but basically yeah
- dale_glass 6mo ago
  Probably your parents setting it up? As far as I know, Worms is a normal DOS game, so the only way for that to happen should be a DOS install configured to just auto-start Worms on boot. Which makes sense as a way to keep a kid away from anything that could cause trouble. I very vaguely recall that there used to be a very few PC games that worked as boot floppies and possibly didn't use DOS at all, but it was a rarity and Worms definitely wasn't one.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]

That honestly sounds amazing. Imagine booting into something like a grub menu that's just a list of classic games.

by chaps 6mo ago

That honestly sounds amazing. Imagine booting into something like a grub menu that's just a list of classic games.

queuebert 6mo ago

I would guess a modern BIOS chip is as powerful as an NES, right?

fluoridation 6mo ago
What do you mean by "BIOS chip"? Like, the flash memory that stores the motherboard's firmware? I don't think that contains any processing elements.
- sedatk 6mo ago
  BIOS can only manage VESA which is much much slower than the capabilities of a modern GPU, so they might have meant graphical performance in regards to that.
  - jasomill 6mo ago
    VESA BIOS Extensions support direct framebuffer access in protected mode, and I don't imagine the lack of accelerated 2D operations would be a practical bottleneck when implementing NES-style graphics on modern PCs. UEFI GOP additionally supports accelerated bitblt, but again YAGNI for 2D game performance at reasonable framerates on a modern PC.
snazz 6mo ago
You can do substantially more in UEFI than NES-level games. (See https://uefi.org/specs/UEFI/2.9_A/12_Protocols_Console_Support.html#graphics-output-protocol https://uefi.org/specs/UEFI/2.9_A/12_Protocols_Console_Suppo...)

Xirdus 6mo ago

I basically had this setup back in the day. I don't really know how I ended up with it, I was 7 at the time and none of it was intentional - but my bootloader had two entries: I could boot into Windows 98, or I could boot into Worms.

Dwedit 6mo ago
It's a similar idea, but that's a DOS menu. At the point when the menu appears, MS-DOS 7.1 has already been loaded.
- tetrisgm 6mo ago
  Stupid question but... would bundling the binary with an ASM port of something that could run this technically make it possible to run without the OS? I realize this is basically doing docker for DOS games and incredibly stupid, I'm just curious about the thought experiment
  - Xirdus 6mo ago
    Well, the "ASM port of something that could run this" would be the OS...
    - tetrisgm 6mo ago
      Right. I guess I mean like an app specific OS haha
    - ahartmetz 6mo ago
      Possibly stripped down to only support that game, but basically yeah
dale_glass 6mo ago
Probably your parents setting it up? As far as I know, Worms is a normal DOS game, so the only way for that to happen should be a DOS install configured to just auto-start Worms on boot. Which makes sense as a way to keep a kid away from anything that could cause trouble. I very vaguely recall that there used to be a very few PC games that worked as boot floppies and possibly didn't use DOS at all, but it was a rarity and Worms definitely wasn't one.

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]