Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

First IBM PC Plays Full Motion Sound and Video

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the idle-distractions-and-other-amusements dept.

wally writes "Something for the older geeks; it 'started as a bit of a joke around the office, about doing stupid things with old technology' he said. 'Stupid things like, "Well, I can calculate fractals on an abacus!" or "Well, I can surf the web on my Game Boy!". Then one person said, "Oh yeah? Well, I can display video on my XT!". And later that day I kept thinking about it and came up with a way to do it.' And he really did. With video proof and a full explanation with all the needed code, full motion video on an original 8088 IBM."

2 of 96 comments (clear)

  1. Putting it in perspective by SigILL · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Really impressive. Some numbers to put all this into perspective.

    If you just want to stream some pre-rendered data to your text-mode screen buffer at full-motion (25+ fps) speeds, you only need 4000 * 25 = 100 kbyte/sec. Even for a 4,77 MHz (about 1 MIPS?) 8088 that's not a lot. And if the CPU can't pull it there's always the DMA controller.

    However, the full demo is about 2 minutes long. If no compression was involved the video data file should be about 12 megabytes. That's larger than the mentioned disk-space requirements, so there's probably some simple motion compression involved.

    --
    Error: password can't contain reverse spelling of ancient Chinese emperor
  2. Re:Amigas did this at the same time and better :) by Black+Cardinal · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This guy actually did this on a 5150, which is the original IBM PC from 1981. His system does have a hard disk, which makes it (almost) equivalent to the XT from 1983, so maybe that is a more fair date to use. One you add a hard disk, about the only difference is the number of expansion slots. The PC had 5 while the XT had 8.