Cool Oldskool

This is Alley Cat, the computer game from 1984. This was top of the line graphics in 1984 on an Intel 8088 CPU.

So, the other day my co-worker gave me this link.
It shows a Youtube video clip of a 4,77MHz 8o88 CPU (from 1979) playing back a full-motion video @ 30fps with sound. o.O

Incredible stuff. I know it takes at least a Pentium 120Mhz to play back a .mp3, and at least a Pentium II 400MHz to play DivX video files.

Of course the oldskool hardware "Hercules" is a bit aided by the fact that at it puts out only 320x200 pixels using only 16 colors (4bit color depth). Hence the blockyness. However, I dare say it gives some multimedia cellphones of last year some stiff competition ;)

An amazing feat of programming in any case. If only we'd have had programmes like this when 8088 was in mainstream use...

Rev it up, sweet memories

Just watched an episode of Modern Marvels, which dealt with the muscle cars of 50's and 60's. When an average working man could go out and buy a brand new 350 - 450 horsepower Pontiac or Chevy or Dodge for a mere $3000, which did not dent his wallet too much.

Some 50 and 60-year old guys talked sentimentally about those times, recalling the best bang for buck cars the automotive industry has seen in a century. I guess it is the feeling that once you could have cutting edge power at your fingertips, cheap and cool, which brings bitter-sweet tears in the eyes of those guys.

I can't help but draw parallels with the modern computer.

Remember these days well, my friends, cherish the old Opteron 144 (1800MHz @ 3000MHz), the A64 3000+ (1800 MHz @ 2700 Mhz), the Athlon XP 2500+ Barton (1833MHz @ 2200 MHz), the P4 Northwood (2600MHz @ 3600 MHz) and the new Core 2 Duo E6300 (2x 1862MHz @ 2x 3200 MHz). These are the processors that cost very little buck for the bang they provide. A little overclocking and you can have a $150 CPU that wastes the $999 XTREME monstrosities.

Remember these good times, for it may not always be so.
There's talk of the new AMD/ATI Fusion CPU, the one that is supposed to become modular. That's it, then. 2 cores for low end, 4 cores for midrange and 8 cores for high-end. And no matter how hard you pump those 2 cores, THEY WILL NEVER TOP THE 8 CORES. Never.

The future looks bleak.

A random thought

Have you ever wondered if people with lousy swimming skills should have their own version of the verb "swim"? Well, here you go:

swim-swam-swollen

where "swollen" describes the last stage for bad swimmers' bodies going through the usual decomposition process...

New wave geekdom

Before you ask - the title of this blog is taken from a song by Daft Punk called "Digital love".

I play a lot of games and am in love with a lot of digital stuff. PC hardware for example. And some great games. Before you start stereotyping and stuff, I should add that I'm also in love with my girlfriend :)

Yes, in addition to my computer, I can also manage to maintain my significant other. This is the new wave of geeks, you know. We have girlfriends. We have a social life. We love gaming. We go nuts about hardware. We are able to convey our thoughts verbally without stammering like a broken record on ecstasy. There is a good probability that you could not visually recognize us in the street. We are the guerillas of geekdom, infiltrating the mainstream.

We get our mothers playing harmless PC games such as The Sims.
We get our sisters watching anime and obscure Japanese TV-series.
We get our fathers playing arcade games from the past decade.
We get our girlfriends installing Windows and hard drives.


You think this is extreme?! Then get this:



We get our GRANDMOTHERS watching the demo runs of the latest editions of 3DMark to appreciate the beauty of computer animation.


Trust me, once you hit that last one, YOU are truly the elite of the new wave geekdom.