30 Jan
2008
30 Jan
'08
10:57 a.m.
scheefj at netscape.net wrote:
In the early 8088/86 days, manufacturers like DEC, HP,
TI and Zenith
thought they could compete with IBM by being "better" in some way.
Zenith had 640x400 graphics and did the Tandy 2000.
As did the AT&T PC 6300/Olivetti M24. It CGA but with a 400-line
monitor and 32K instead of 16K display RAM. It could do 640x400 in 2
colors. Once nice side-effect of having that much RAM is that it
unintentionally gave CGA 2 true video pages -- but since having only one
page normally was an exploitable trick, such games that used the trick
didn't display properly on the 6300.
A later "Display Enhancement Board" (DEB) upped that to 16 colors with
palette capabilities, and also allowed the onboard CGA to mix with the
DEB graphics, allowing mixing graphics with text. I never once saw
commercial software exploit this :-(
So to the original question -- the three requirements
will limit the
program to "true compatibles", meaning a hardware clone. The most
incompatible MS-DOS machine ever, the Seattle Gazelle, uses a serial
terminal so the only "sound" available would be the terminal bell.
LOL
Thanks for the advice.
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/