Tag Archives: Crystal Dream

The Covox years

Posted on November 28, 2017 by Scali

I have covered various early sound solutions from the DOS/8088 era recently, including AdLib, Sound Blaster, PCjr/Tandy’s SN76489 chip, and the trusty old PC speaker itself. One device that has yet to be mentioned however, is the Covox Speech Thing. … Continue reading →

Posted in Hardware news, Oldskool/retro programming | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

DMA activation

Posted on March 12, 2017 by Scali

No, not the pseudoscience stuff, I am talking about Direct Memory Access. More specifically in the context of IBM PC and compatibles, which use the Intel 8237A DMA controller. For some reason, I had never used the 8237A before. I … Continue reading →

Posted in Oldskool/retro programming | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Triton’s Crystal Dream – the final chapter

Posted on January 6, 2015 by Scali

A few years ago, I patched some of the code in Triton’s Crystal Dream demo from 1992: Although my code made it work on my real 486DX2-80 machine with Sound Blaster Pro (the ‘ideal’ setup for this demo), it did … Continue reading →

Posted in Oldskool/retro programming, Software development | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Triton’s Crystal Dream restored and preserved for posterity

Posted on March 21, 2012 by Scali

As I mentioned earlier, I have fixed the Sound Blaster routines for  Crystal Dream by Triton. I have made a video capture of it playing on my 486DX2-80, with Sound Blaster Pro: In a way it feels like restoring an … Continue reading →

Posted in Oldskool/retro programming, Software development | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 20 Comments

Oldskool demo fixing

Posted on March 14, 2012 by Scali

While I was doing the oldskool PC stuff, the demo Crystal Dream by Triton was one of my inspirations: It’s one of the first demos ever to have smooth polygons on PC, and great mod-based music. It uses the same … Continue reading →

Posted in Oldskool/retro programming, Software development | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments