Don't forget The Trampps' Disco Inferno. I just picture legions of hipsters bursting into sparkles and hot-burning flame, their bones reduced to shimmering mirror-rubble.
No, I think that the grandparent was right. If results at my school were any indication, the less questioning peer groups ultimately enjoyed drugs and alcohol more than we did - DARE's images of consequence education might have kept kids from going completely overboard, but did very little to quell kids' desires to escape from the monotony of small-town life.
But Vista was awful and slow and terrible for me. Following the application of the first service pack the OS stopped loading the display drivers and cited a Code 43 error, and no power on heaven or Earth could get them working again. Performance was consistently slower than XP even on a Core 2 that was comfortably better-specced than Microsoft's recommendations, and in the end I found too few reasons to stick with it.
As for Crysis, I thought it was pretty but otherwise played out like a Sci-Fi movie of the week with great production values. Combined with Vista it was a system-devouring sight to behold...
Under 50? No small number - it's part generational gap, and partly because most of the older people I know are too busy for it. That said, Niris has a point - WoW is colorful, popular, and fun, just like McDonald's.
I remember playing Jill of the Jungle on a friend's 8 MHz Tandy 286, and being in awe that it scaled down so gracefully - my home PC ran with VGA graphics and 16-bit stereo audio, and his ran with CGA and PC speaker sound. The framerate was still perfectly reasonable too, except when one invoked the wrath of the bees. Out they'd swarm, devouring CPU time and chopping the framerate in half. Even now when we find some new computer-eating FPS we bitch about "a serious case of the lag bees" and laugh...
I dunno about that. My experience with Slackware has been diverse enough that my Ubuntu-using friends usually call me first when they have a problem. It definitely teaches you how to read the documentation...
Even "mediocre" hardware's good enough for a lot of tasks now. We've come a long way from the days of the brand new system that's too underpowered to run an office suite, let alone Doom II.:)
I've always loved this idea: use a wrapper within Wine to translate Glide API calls to Direct3D, and then to OpenGL.:) If you try this, let me know how it goes.
Actually the only factor limiting the resolution of the Voodoo2 was its framebuffer size. 4 MB of framebuffer memory doesn't get you that far in a 3D rendering scenario since every frame has to be double-buffered. Factor in the z-buffer and a geometry buffer or two, and you hit the iron wall of memory limitations - thus, no resolution past 800x600. Without allocating a z-buffer a single Voodoo2 could manage 1024x768, but it was slow and generally prone to graphical artifacting. Voodoo2s in SLI could manage more because they shared a framebuffer (though the same didn't apply to texture memory, especially when multitexturing was enabled...).
Having seen a build of the game run a while back, I can confirm that it's real. If it was ever going to be released it would be a fun game with a LOT of personality.:)
Y'know, Vista would be the perfect OS to install for the computer I'm building into my 6000 SUX. Microsoft could even use it in their ad campaigns! "See the power of American ingenuity at work."
I disagree... Rumour has it that chairs made for a certain redmond company were specifically made that could withstand re-entry in the case a certain CEO really blew his top off
No, don't you understand?! If they withstand re-entry heat then people all over the world will be in danger! Think, man! Think of the people below!
Hardware virtualization is disabled on some lower-end Core 2 CPUs, as well as the "cut-down" variants like the Pentium Dual-Core and Celerons. AMD's lineup is a bit better off at the lower end... as far as I can tell the Athlon 64 X2s have supported this since the 90nm Windsor revision Socket AM2 CPUs. Some of the later Pentium Ds and a couple of the VERY high-end Pentium 4s also supported virtualization.
What he's trying to say is that running in the software mode's default resolution of 320x200 was generally faster than trying to use the S3 Virge at 640x480, in spite of the performance-offloading and graphics-enhancing characteristics of the graphics chip. Further, a PC with an S3 Virge and a very fast CPU could provide a performance boost that would finally bump it consistently ahead of the software-only solution, but only just.
The Virge really could have been acceptable if its limitations had been taken into account - essentially writing a low-level rasterizer for the chip that equaled software quality would have provided a noticeable performance boost - but when the chip was also expected to handle z-buffering, bilinear filtering, perspective correction, and mipmapping in addition to triangle setup and polygon painting, it was simply overwhelmed. It's the fate that befell many, many first generation 3D accelerators - the Virge was just at a weak position even within the company of its benighted brethren.
I believe that he means the display drivers work properly for 2D. Mesa provides GL support in software mode, though there was a fellow who managed to hack / beat in support for pre-Geforce3 cards based on old, old Utah-GLX documentation.
Following the release of Haiku 1.0, I'd expect that they'll probably need help porting Gallium3D over. Hmm...
For a site supposedly traditionally supportive of alternative platforms, in practice there's a surprising amount of contempt for any alternative platform that doesn't fall into the cool club of Linux and OS X. I'm not a Haiku user, but if someone is writing an open source OS, good luck to them. Or maybe we should give up, and ridicule anyone who doesn't use Windows?
(I see this with other things - e.g., Internet Explorer is bad, Firefox is good... but Opera for some reason is also bad. The usual argument of it not being open source doesn't even apply to Haiku, though. By that reasoning, we should be praising Haiku, and criticising OS X!)
Is anyone who starts an open source project flogging a "deadhorse", unless they're already mainstream? What a depressing attitude.
"Deadhorse" doesn't make sense anyway - according to Wikipedia, Haiku is a relatively new OS, only having received significant development in the last few years. Oh, it's a dead horse because it maintains some compatibility with BeOS? Big deal - by that reasoning, we should tag every OS X article "deadhorse", on the grounds that it shares its trademark name with a long dead twenty five year old OS that was never even particularly good at the time.
Following that line of reasoning, everyone should turn up their noses and vomit contemptuously upon OS X, since it's essentially NeXTStep 5.x, and its predecessors were innovative but ultimately failed to gain marketplace acceptance. What's more, it's a UI pastiche of elements of NeXT and Mac OS Classic, which itself was a prolapsed failure of tacking functionality onto an obsolete technical base.
Now this is a heavily biased, dismissive (and in many ways flat-out wrong) perspective, but there are more ridiculous things posted here all of the time. Binary thinking is dangerous, and nearly invariably short-sighted.
VIA actually bought up Cyrix's engineering team and a good deal of their IP; the original VIA Cyrix III was the last chip that was engineered by that team, and the team quit afterward. IDT's team was also purchased by VIA, and that team is responsible for subsequent VIA CPUs. The Geode was purchased from National Semiconductor back in 2003 and is still being manufactured, but won't be receiving any substantial redesigns in the future.
Using something like FreeDOS or "MS-DOS 7.10," not as much as you'd think. Some programs may report incorrect hard drive sizes, but if you're using a command.com that supports FAT32 then Win3.1 honestly doesn't care.:)
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Don't forget The Trampps' Disco Inferno. I just picture legions of hipsters bursting into sparkles and hot-burning flame, their bones reduced to shimmering mirror-rubble.
No, I think that the grandparent was right. If results at my school were any indication, the less questioning peer groups ultimately enjoyed drugs and alcohol more than we did - DARE's images of consequence education might have kept kids from going completely overboard, but did very little to quell kids' desires to escape from the monotony of small-town life.
Flame on, you crazy bastard.
But Vista was awful and slow and terrible for me. Following the application of the first service pack the OS stopped loading the display drivers and cited a Code 43 error, and no power on heaven or Earth could get them working again. Performance was consistently slower than XP even on a Core 2 that was comfortably better-specced than Microsoft's recommendations, and in the end I found too few reasons to stick with it. As for Crysis, I thought it was pretty but otherwise played out like a Sci-Fi movie of the week with great production values. Combined with Vista it was a system-devouring sight to behold...
Under 50? No small number - it's part generational gap, and partly because most of the older people I know are too busy for it. That said, Niris has a point - WoW is colorful, popular, and fun, just like McDonald's.
The SDK's out. Go, find and enjoy. :)
I remember playing Jill of the Jungle on a friend's 8 MHz Tandy 286, and being in awe that it scaled down so gracefully - my home PC ran with VGA graphics and 16-bit stereo audio, and his ran with CGA and PC speaker sound. The framerate was still perfectly reasonable too, except when one invoked the wrath of the bees. Out they'd swarm, devouring CPU time and chopping the framerate in half. Even now when we find some new computer-eating FPS we bitch about "a serious case of the lag bees" and laugh...
I dunno about that. My experience with Slackware has been diverse enough that my Ubuntu-using friends usually call me first when they have a problem. It definitely teaches you how to read the documentation...
Even "mediocre" hardware's good enough for a lot of tasks now. We've come a long way from the days of the brand new system that's too underpowered to run an office suite, let alone Doom II. :)
I've always loved this idea: use a wrapper within Wine to translate Glide API calls to Direct3D, and then to OpenGL. :) If you try this, let me know how it goes.
Actually the only factor limiting the resolution of the Voodoo2 was its framebuffer size. 4 MB of framebuffer memory doesn't get you that far in a 3D rendering scenario since every frame has to be double-buffered. Factor in the z-buffer and a geometry buffer or two, and you hit the iron wall of memory limitations - thus, no resolution past 800x600. Without allocating a z-buffer a single Voodoo2 could manage 1024x768, but it was slow and generally prone to graphical artifacting. Voodoo2s in SLI could manage more because they shared a framebuffer (though the same didn't apply to texture memory, especially when multitexturing was enabled...).
Having seen a build of the game run a while back, I can confirm that it's real. If it was ever going to be released it would be a fun game with a LOT of personality. :)
Y'know, Vista would be the perfect OS to install for the computer I'm building into my 6000 SUX. Microsoft could even use it in their ad campaigns! "See the power of American ingenuity at work."
Thanks. Enjoy your profound, weary cynicism. Hope the TV's a soothing balm.
One can only hope.
I disagree... Rumour has it that chairs made for a certain redmond company were specifically made that could withstand re-entry in the case a certain CEO really blew his top off
No, don't you understand?! If they withstand re-entry heat then people all over the world will be in danger! Think, man! Think of the people below!
Hardware virtualization is disabled on some lower-end Core 2 CPUs, as well as the "cut-down" variants like the Pentium Dual-Core and Celerons. AMD's lineup is a bit better off at the lower end... as far as I can tell the Athlon 64 X2s have supported this since the 90nm Windsor revision Socket AM2 CPUs. Some of the later Pentium Ds and a couple of the VERY high-end Pentium 4s also supported virtualization.
It's worth noting that the recent Brisbane core Athlon X2s also have a 45W TDP. Most of what you've mentioned also applies there.
What he's trying to say is that running in the software mode's default resolution of 320x200 was generally faster than trying to use the S3 Virge at 640x480, in spite of the performance-offloading and graphics-enhancing characteristics of the graphics chip. Further, a PC with an S3 Virge and a very fast CPU could provide a performance boost that would finally bump it consistently ahead of the software-only solution, but only just.
The Virge really could have been acceptable if its limitations had been taken into account - essentially writing a low-level rasterizer for the chip that equaled software quality would have provided a noticeable performance boost - but when the chip was also expected to handle z-buffering, bilinear filtering, perspective correction, and mipmapping in addition to triangle setup and polygon painting, it was simply overwhelmed. It's the fate that befell many, many first generation 3D accelerators - the Virge was just at a weak position even within the company of its benighted brethren.
Hey, I didn't know about this. Thank you for the link... in the near future I may dig in and play with Amiga for the first time ever. :)
I believe that he means the display drivers work properly for 2D. Mesa provides GL support in software mode, though there was a fellow who managed to hack / beat in support for pre-Geforce3 cards based on old, old Utah-GLX documentation. Following the release of Haiku 1.0, I'd expect that they'll probably need help porting Gallium3D over. Hmm...
For a site supposedly traditionally supportive of alternative platforms, in practice there's a surprising amount of contempt for any alternative platform that doesn't fall into the cool club of Linux and OS X. I'm not a Haiku user, but if someone is writing an open source OS, good luck to them. Or maybe we should give up, and ridicule anyone who doesn't use Windows?
(I see this with other things - e.g., Internet Explorer is bad, Firefox is good ... but Opera for some reason is also bad. The usual argument of it not being open source doesn't even apply to Haiku, though. By that reasoning, we should be praising Haiku, and criticising OS X!)
Is anyone who starts an open source project flogging a "deadhorse", unless they're already mainstream? What a depressing attitude.
"Deadhorse" doesn't make sense anyway - according to Wikipedia, Haiku is a relatively new OS, only having received significant development in the last few years. Oh, it's a dead horse because it maintains some compatibility with BeOS? Big deal - by that reasoning, we should tag every OS X article "deadhorse", on the grounds that it shares its trademark name with a long dead twenty five year old OS that was never even particularly good at the time.
Following that line of reasoning, everyone should turn up their noses and vomit contemptuously upon OS X, since it's essentially NeXTStep 5.x, and its predecessors were innovative but ultimately failed to gain marketplace acceptance. What's more, it's a UI pastiche of elements of NeXT and Mac OS Classic, which itself was a prolapsed failure of tacking functionality onto an obsolete technical base.
Now this is a heavily biased, dismissive (and in many ways flat-out wrong) perspective, but there are more ridiculous things posted here all of the time. Binary thinking is dangerous, and nearly invariably short-sighted.
VIA actually bought up Cyrix's engineering team and a good deal of their IP; the original VIA Cyrix III was the last chip that was engineered by that team, and the team quit afterward. IDT's team was also purchased by VIA, and that team is responsible for subsequent VIA CPUs. The Geode was purchased from National Semiconductor back in 2003 and is still being manufactured, but won't be receiving any substantial redesigns in the future.
"Vrij": Dutch. "Libre": Spanish. "Frei": German. "Libero": Italian. "Livre": French.
Using something like FreeDOS or "MS-DOS 7.10," not as much as you'd think. Some programs may report incorrect hard drive sizes, but if you're using a command.com that supports FAT32 then Win3.1 honestly doesn't care. :)