[Eriamjh]

OK, timeline me if this was posted before (and provide a link), but I came across this while reading about old processors and thought it was cool.

Full motion video on a 1981 IBM PC

It's 4-color CGA running at 30 FPS with sound. I'm amazed, but not really surprised. Using modern techniques, the video was basically optimized to play on this system. He doesn't go into any detail (that I read about).

I wonder what else could be done on some ancient machines. My 2GHz CD iMac is nice, but I've always been fascinated by old technology and what it could do even after it's long "obsolete". Anyone want to do this on a Mac 128K?

[The Godfather]

Wow. They should have had this as a retort to the 1984 Macintosh intro

[mitchell_pgh]

Interesting...

I still remember a demo in 1997 of the Be OS where they had something like 5 videos running simultaneously when my Mac could barely run one.

[Sijmen]

Wow! Now think of what my Psion 5MX can do with its 36 mhz processor

[nerd]

That reminds me of some of the early Amiga Demo days as well. I miss those days sometimes..... Flash animations don't have that geek factor to them.

[kick52]

that is pretty amazing.

i just saw the top ranked 64k demoscene at mac.scene.org... that was legend

[MindFad]

Looks like somewhere in the realm of 64x80 video res, but pretty impressive nonetheless for 30FPS on the FIRST freakin' PC.

[macgeek2005]

humph. I'd like to see someone play a 1080p HD video on my Mac SE/30.

[vmarks]

This isn't an ordinary Model 5150 machine.

I know, I have a few, including one that was purchased at the announcement of them in 1981.

The 5150 came equipped with no HDD, monochrome graphics adapter, single density single sided 5.25" floppy drive, and 16k of RAM.

My father soldered the chips onto it to upgrade it to 640k RAM. We changed drives to double sided double density half-height 5.25 and 3.5".

We added a CGA adapter, my father -made- the joystick adapter card repurposing joysticks from a later PC jr. machine. The other popular card at the time was the Hercules graphics adapter. We didn't have that.


The 5150 that sits on my desk has a 10MB hard drive in it, but we didn't add that until 1988.

There was no sound card available, just the internal pc speaker, which was NOT capable of the sounds being generated by that video. The SoundBlaster card he's using wasn't available for a few more years after that machine was on the market.

I think the key here is that it isn't doing most of its work on the 4.77mhz processor, but instead is using the SoundBlaster to do much of the work.

The site says: " The BLASTER environment variable must be set properly or else the program won't work at all since the sound hardware drives the entire playback system (this sounds dumb but actually solves a ****load of problems, so don't knock it unless you understand it)."

At any rate, I've got two 5150s, a 5155 from 1984
and a 5140 convertible from 1986 -- with the thermal printer accessory that attaches on the back.

[Eriamjh]

He's not saying it's a stock 5150, but it is still a 4.7Mhz processor. The Soundblaster was a typical sound card as was the CGA adapter. It may not have come out until 1988, but it is still impressive.

A computer with only a floppy drive couldn't do this. A computer with out a sound card would have no sound. A computer with no CGA adapter might be limited to a pixellated B&W screen of some kind. That's not what it is about.

[tooki]

All this shows is how good programming can make the most of the hardware, a property long gone in modern software. We now take for granted the future availability of faster hardware, so we write super-sloppy, slow code and never optimize it.

tooki

[Eriamjh]

True. It's called "optimization".

But this demonstrates something that wouldn't actually be possible even in 1988 because video codecs didn't exist becuase the technology wasn't even invented yet. I'm guessing that this guy basically invented a codec for the hardware. The CPU isn't doing converting on the fly of some data to display, it's streaming an already pre-formatted mass of data to the screen in a predictible manner that works for video and sound.

In other words, I betcha my 200Mhz 604e could display HD video if a special codec was developed specifically for that hardware. It can't take a typical HD stream and display it, but if the data was pre-formatted for the machine, I'm relatively sure it could show 1024x768 pictures at 30fps. Too bad I don't have the skills to do this.

[OreoCookie]

What's so amazing about that, I remember videos with stereo sound on my Amiga …�
(Its cpu also ran at 4.7 MHz.) Then my first and last PC: no sound, they even forgot to ship Windows 3.1, so I had no graphics either for a week

[TheoCryst]

Impressive, even though it wouldn't have been possible back in 1981. It's pretty amazing what a dedicated programmer can do.

EDITL Haha, when I first glanced at the thread title, I definitely saw "4.7GHz" and couldn't quite figure out what was so noteworthy about something like that.

[Eriamjh]

The amiga 1000 came out in 1985 and used a 68K processor (same as the Macs). It was impressive, but also ran a 7MHz processor in addition to being 16bit.

[Tuoder]

1337 as h311.

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie 

(Its cpu also ran at 4.7 MHz.)

I double-checked: the CPU ran at roughly 7 MHz … so the original IBM PC is hardly a match

Originally Posted by Eriamjh 

The amiga 1000 came out in 1985 and used a 68K processor (same as the Macs). It was impressive.

Absolutely. The OS was capable of multitasking and Amigas had very impressive graphics and sound capabilities at that time (the Amiga 500 allowed up to 4096 colors) … the good ol' times of computing

[Eriamjh]

I just read that the Amiga used a clock signal that was deliberately exactly twice that of NTSC for easy coding to the display. It was cutting edge, but I think seen mostly as a toy, not a REAL computer.

[OreoCookie]

Not really. Amigas were used in a lot of TV productions. For instance, a lot of the CGI effects of early episodes of Babylon 5 were done on Amigas!

[vmarks]

Originally Posted by Eriamjh 

He's not saying it's a stock 5150, but it is still a 4.7Mhz processor. The Soundblaster was a typical sound card as was the CGA adapter. It may not have come out until 1988, but it is still impressive.

A computer with only a floppy drive couldn't do this. A computer with out a sound card would have no sound. A computer with no CGA adapter might be limited to a pixellated B&W screen of some kind. That's not what it is about.

The Soundblaster wasn't a typical card at the time the machine was in common use. By the time the Soundblaster came out, the machine had been surpassed by 286 machines and was almost discontinued.

It's a neat little show, but it's a 1981 machine that had to wait 7 years until the parts to do this became available. Even in the 80s, 7 years was several lifetimes in terms of computer advancements.

I'm all for pushing the envelope, I used DOS 6 on 386 to decode and play mp3. Similar to this guy's show, mp3 didn't exist in wide distribution until Pentium II was really in it's heyday.

[vmarks]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie 

Not really. Amigas were used in a lot of TV productions. For instance, a lot of the CGI effects of early episodes of Babylon 5 were done on Amigas!

Babylon 5 came out in 1994.

Commodore (owners of Amiga) went bankrupt in 1994. As early as 1992, Commodore was sending out emails on bitnet asking for help and assuring everyone they weren't going under.

http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/irony.txt

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by vmarks 

Babylon 5 came out in 1994.

Commodore (owners of Amiga) went bankrupt in 1994. As early as 1992, Commodore was sending out emails on bitnet asking for help and assuring everyone they weren't going under.

http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/irony.txt

I am aware of that. But according to wikipedia and some Babylon 5 fan sites, they have used Amigas in the earlier parts of the show. Ditto for Sea Quest.

AFAIK Amigas remained in service at smaller TV stations for quite a while.