Author Archives: Scali

.NET Core: the small print

Posted on March 10, 2024 by Scali

Some time ago, I wrote an article about upgrading code from .NET Framework to .NET Core. While this may give you a decent overview to get your code up and running in .NET Core, the devil is, as always, in … Continue reading →

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Lemmings, or how clever tricks make platforms more different than they seem

Posted on February 18, 2024 by Scali

The other day I read this in-depth article on font usage in early DOS games by VileR. Since some of the fonts were apparently stored not as 1-bit bitmaps, but as multiple bits per pixel, I was wondering when the … Continue reading →

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Some results from the modified XDC movie player for 8088/CGA

Posted on January 2, 2024 by Scali

For my modifications to the XDC player, I targeted my Philips 3105 XT clone. It has a turbo mode of 8 MHz, and an ATi Small Wonder CGA clone. The harddisk is a 32MB Disk-on-Module connected to an XT-IDE card. … Continue reading →

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Video playback on low-end MS-DOS machines

Posted on January 1, 2024 by Scali

Playing video on MS-DOS… it kinda was a thing with things such as the GRASP/GLPro and FLIC formats back in the day. But not on REALLY low-end machines, such as 8088s and CGA. Until the demo 8088 Corruption was released … Continue reading →

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Bothsidesism…

Posted on December 24, 2023 by Scali

Say there’s a person who makes some weird claims about the Amiga graphics system, like saying the Amiga doesn’t have any ‘400-line modes’, and it’s only low quality TV-resolution… Another person then says the Amiga in fact does have a … Continue reading →

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A small update on downgrading

Posted on December 19, 2023 by Scali

About a year ago, I wrote some articles on downgrading a codebase, because Windows 10 2015 LTSB did not support any version of .NET higher than 4.6.2 (which also includes the .NET Core-based .NET 5 and higher). At the time, … Continue reading →

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Implementing live video streaming in software

Posted on September 26, 2023 by Scali

Some time ago I wrote about video codecs and implementing GPU-accelerated video decoding in a DirectX application. The reason was that I found that the information may be out there, but it is difficult to find the right information in … Continue reading →

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MartyPC: PC emulation done right

Posted on May 30, 2023 by Scali

I would like to give a heads-up about the new PC emulator on the block. It is called “MartyPC”, which indeed is a reference to Marty McFly from the Back To The Future movies. And indeed, that is a tribute … Continue reading →

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Cartridges for the IBM PC

Posted on May 29, 2023 by Scali

Cartridges? For the IBM PC? There’s no such thing! Well, there kinda is… The IBM PCjr has two cartridge slots. Now, one may argue about whether the PCjr is actually an IBM PC compatible or not, but let’s look at … Continue reading →

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Another adventure in downgrading, part 4: Fixed function

Posted on April 15, 2023 by Scali

A few months ago, I discussed downgrading a modern codebase to .NET 4 and Windows XP. I managed to get the code working to the point that all functionality worked, aside from web views, given that browsers no longer support … Continue reading →

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