Fresh Hacker News | We ran Doom on a 40 year old printer controller (Agfa Compugraphic 9000PS) [video]

▲We ran Doom on a 40 year old printer controller (Agfa Compugraphic 9000PS) [video](youtube.com)

51 points by zdw 4 days ago | 8 comments

My 12 y/o daughter recently ran into a "does it run DOOM" reference in media (I think a graphic novel-- not sure) and asked me about it. I got to explain the phenomenon and show her some examples (she found the pregnancy test to be particularly amusing). I'll have to show her this one.

▲vardump 3 hours ago

The pregnancy test had altered innards. So it was fake.

▲EvanAnderson 3 hours ago

Sadness for that, and for my inability to read in-depth.

▲vardump 12 minutes ago

Well, it's still a great idea and a cool project.

▲anthk 1 hour ago

But you can play Zachine v3 games in a pencil, such as Zork I-III, Tristam Island, Calypso... with builtin writting recognition under some special printed sheets (where you can print and then xerox them for the cheap).

▲Something1234 3 hours ago

What’s the graphic novel?

▲EvanAnderson 3 hours ago

I don't know. I'll ask her. She burns thru them and it may have already been returned to the library.

▲mkovach 4 hours ago

’ve been following Adrian's Afga system series, great dive into the unknown.

Realistically, I would've stopped the moment BASIC worked, called it "good enough," and then gotten distracted attempting to write a Forth for it.

▲tonyedgecombe 3 hours ago

Writing a Forth for hardware that originally ran PostScript would have been an interesting decision.

▲anthk 1 hour ago

I'm running EForth under subleq right now (https://github.com/howerj/subleq)

▲lizardking 3 hours ago

Looks roughly as smooth as it looked on my 25mhz 386

▲fipar 1 hour ago

On my 33mhz (I'm almost, but not quite sure about the frequency) 486 SX (yeah ...) it ran OK until the levels where you'd get a lot of monsters. In those, I had to zoom in to the smallest possible screen size and even then it was barely acceptable.

So while the video is impressive and I couldn't do something like this myself, I was glad when I saw how bad it ran, as that computer of mine would a little bit more than 30yo today, so to have that beat by a 40yo printer controller would make me think I could have done something to have it run better back then!

▲egypturnash 2 hours ago

I am faintly disappointed that "running Doom" did not involve printing out a series of frames at a hilariously low effective framerate, then taking the pile and using it as a flipbook.

I mean, sure, major props for kludging your own video generator in there, but...

▲Aardwolf 1 hour ago

Now please do it on a Cray-1 from 1976!

▲peteforde 5 hours ago

This is freaking awesome.

▲esafak 4 hours ago

Agfa: now there's a name you don't see any more.

▲tonyedgecombe 3 hours ago

There were so many companies in that sector back in the eighties and nineties. It seemed like every conglomerate had a division making printers.

▲esafak 1 hour ago

Indeed. I once had a Star dot matrix printer. Amazingly they still make printers, among other things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Micronics

▲estomagordo 5 hours ago

Now do Crysis

▲vardump 40 minutes ago

Whoever owns the rights for Crysis should open source as much as they can.

Just so that Crysis can one day run on a future computationally overpowered smart toaster.