3.1     What's IRC?  Are there any IRC channels established for demos?

IRC stands for Internet Relay chat.  You can find more info about it in
newsgroups such as alt.irc, etc.  With IRC, you can enter "channels"
(like a CB Radio) and discuss things with people located all around the
world in real time.  It is a good place to stop by and ask questions.

As of this writing, the main two channels concerning demos are

#coders  Concerning PC Demo coders
#trax    Concerning PC Music Makers.

Feel free to join at any time... it is fun and pretty addicting!

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-

3.2     What's the World Wide Web (WWW)?  Are there any places to learn
        about demos on the WWW?

Created by university professors in CERN (Switzerland), WWW is a network
of hypertext documents that can connect to other hypertext documents.
Accessible by WWW "browsers", such as Mosaic and Netscape, it allows you
to connect to WWW pages, where you can read articles, look at pictures,
download files, etc.  In short, if you haven't tried the WWW yet, you're
missing a whole new aspect of the Internet.

If you're looking for a browser, try one of these three:

    Mosaic, the original WWW browser, can be found in
    ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu and exists for Windows, Mac and Unix.

    Netscape, a very nice browser that supports additional layout
    commands, is available in ftp://ftp.netscape.com

    Lynx is a text-mode browser that you can use on any terminal.

Many demo groups in the demo scene have their own WWW home pages.  It
would be too long here to list all of them, however Trixter has a
homepage which explains about PC demos and lists many, many demo
resources.  You can access this page at:

        http://www.mcs.com/~trixter/html/demos.html

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3.3     Are there any newsletters about demos?

There are two semi-weekly newsletters produced by the Hornet demo
group:  DemoNews and TraxWeekly.  

DemoNews is both a list of new files uploaded to ftp.cdrom.com
(Hornet's home base and one of the largest demo sites on the
Internet), news, interviews, and articles that pertain to the demo
scene.  DemoNews was started by Dan Wright (Pallbearer / Toxic
Zombies & Hornet) and is continued by Snowman, Gravedigger, and
Trixter / Hornet.
     
TraxWeekly is similar to DemoNews, but is dedicated to the music
scene (see FAQ 2.4).  It's called "TraxWeekly" because it stemmed
>from the IRC channel #trax (see FAQ 3.1).

Here's how you can subscribe to either magazine (the following is
an excerpt from TraxWeekly):

 _____How to subscribe to TraxWeekly

 TraxWeekly subscriptions are free, and can be requested in this
 matter:

 Send mail to:                listserver@unseen.aztec.co.za
 And put in the message body: subscribe trax-weekly [your real name]

 If you want to unsubscribe to the list, mail the same address and write:

                              unsubscribe trax-weekly

 TraxWeekly is also available on ftp.cdrom.com:

 /pub/demos/incoming/news/  for the most recently uploaded version, or
 /pub/demos/news/traxw/     for all of the back issues.

 _____How to subscribe to DemoNews

   #1 E-mail to listserver@unseen.aztec.co.za (any subject line will do)

   #2 On the first line in the body of the mail, write:

        subscribe demuan-list FirstName LastName

      Examples:

        subscribe demuan-list Christopher Mann
        subscribe demuan-list Snowman
        subscribe demuan-list r3cgm@dax.cc.uakron.edu  <---- WRONG!!

      The listserver will automatically take the return address of your
      mail.  That address is where newsletters will be sent.  You can not
      specify an alternate address.

   #3 Send it

 _____Having Trouble?

   If you have difficulty with the listserver, feel free to write Snowman
   at r3cgm@dax.cc.uakron.edu for problems with the DemoNews list, and
   Popcorn at campbell@fox.nstn.ca for problems with the TraxWeekly list.

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+Misc. information about Demos+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-

4.0.0   Why is the Gravis Ultrasound (GUS) sound card supported more
	than the Sound Blaster in demos?

Several reasons:

        - The GUS sounds much better than the Sound Blaster because
        it can play back 32 channels of stereo digitized sound at
        once, while the Sound Blaster Pro/16 series can only play
        back 2 channels.

        - Because the GUS can play back multiple channels, there
        is no need for mixing several channels into one (like
        playing MODs on the Sound Blaster series), so much less
        CPU time is utilized for playing music.  This means more
        CPU time is available for graphical effects, calculation,
        etc.

        - Many demo coders consider the GUS easier to program.

        - Many demo scene members have gotten free GUS cards in
        exchange for programming demos/games/utilities that
        specifically use the GUS.

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-

4.0.1   What are the different types of GUS sound cards?

There are three currently available, and their major differences
are mostly in their recording abilities:

Name                    Record                  Playback        
~~~~                    ~~~~~~                  ~~~~~~~~

Gravis Ultrasound       44.1KHz, 8-bit stereo   44.1KHz, 16-bit stereo
Gravis Ultrasound MAX   48.0KHz, 16-bit stereo  48.0KHz, 16-bit stereo
Gravis Ultrasound ACE   Cannot record sound     44.1KHz, 16-bit stereo

The Gravis Ultrasound is not manufactured anymore; the MAX retails
for about $179 US, and the ACE retails for about $99 US.

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-

4.0.2   Why is the Gravis Ultrasound sound card supported more
        than General MIDI?

While General MIDI has much higher sound quality instruments, the
number of instruments (and the instruments themselves) are fixed
in nature; that is, you cannot change any of them.  (If you don't
like the sound of a particular piano instrument, for example, you're
stuck with it.)  MODs, and MOD-like formats (see "music modules"
earlier in this FAQ) allow the composer to use whatever instruments
he feels like.

Also, General MIDI boards differ greatly in price and sound/instrument
quality, and a song on one GMIDI board might not sound the same on
another.

Finally, General MIDI boards usually cost over $200 for a good
quality one--which is usually unattainable, given the budget of
most demo scene members.

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-

4.0.3   Can I emulate the GUS with my Sound Blaster?

No.  The GUS performs so many functions over the Sound Blaster that
writing an emulator would be extremely difficult.  Couple this
information with the fact that many demos take over the hardware
entirely, and you realize it makes writing an emulator impossible.

Of course, a *hardware* emulator for the GUS exists.  :)  It's
called the GUS ACE (see FAQ 4.0.1), and was designed to co-exist
with your existing sound card.  They're only about $90 in the US.

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-

4.1.0   Which video card is best for viewing demos?

The nature of demo programmers dictates that they program the
coolest stuff with the crappiest hardware.  In other words, most (if
not all) demos require a register-compatible VGA card.  For the best
experience, you need as fast a video card as possible, because most
video cards are the main bottleneck when displaying fast graphics
(the PC's memory is much faster than the video card's memory).

If your PC has a VESA Local bus (VLB) or PCI bus (PCI), then make
sure you're using a VLB or PCI card, as the speed of these cards are
at least twice as fast as a standard ISA card.

Try not to buy a video card unless you've tested it yourself on
the store's computer--preferably with a demo or action game, which
update the video card's memory over 30 times a second.

If you can't do that, then generally, get a video card based on
either the Cirrus Logic, S3, or Tseng ET4000 chipset.  These chipsets
are very fast.  (Many older demos use special hardware tricks that
might only work on an ET4000; the ET4000 is considered the demo
"standard".)

Several people in comp.sys.ibm.pc.demos have compared their sound
cards; here are some of their comments:

: Try a card based on the Tseng ET-4000W32p chip. It's the fastest for DOS 
: I've ever come across. And they're quite cheap, too.

I can second this.  On a 486/66 my Diamond Stealth 32 clocks at
75% of system RAM speed.

Also for anyone interested, the now discontinued Diamond Stealth
32 is a dream for anyone developing a VESA Hi-res game or app.  We
have compared many, *many* video card BIOSes, and that one the
closest to fully complete VESA support that we have ever found
(just one small, obscure bug).  It even supports the low-resolution
hi-color modes in ROM.  (to which Kendall Bennet of SciTech software,
makers of the very excellent UniVBE driver, responded with "WHAT!?!
No one supports that in BIOS").

---

Try an ARK1000 or ARK2000 chip on a fast PCI bus machine (which he
has).  They will clock in at nearly twice the speed of system RAM
(about 60Mb/s, even higher on Triton chipset boards, system RAM is
about 40Mb/s).

The WT4000/W32p is fast, but nowhere near the fastest. The ATI
Mach64 is faster than this, as is the S3 Vision864/964 and new
Vision868/968 chips, but the ARK chips are the fastest bar none
(and I have over 75 video cards in our office for testing purposes).

---

>I don't know what the current rave is, but I'm settling for the new
>Matrox Millennium 2mb wram. I'm hoping to get some GOOD programming
>docs to take advantage of the hardware Gouraud shaded poly's.
>Currently it is the fastest 24bit card out there, according to PC mag,
>with over 16million 24bit pixels/s @ 1024x768. 20fps!!! not too shabby
>with that resolution and color depth. 

DON'T TOUCH a Matrox Card if you are interested in DOS performance.
These things fly under Windows, but are about 6 orders of magnitude
slower than the fastest DOS cards (no kidding; they get about 1Mb/s
to video memory, the fastest DOS cards get around 60Mb/s on a PCI
bus).

---

	The Hercules Stingray 64/Video is currently the king of
the hill as far as demos/games are concerned. It is based on the
ARK2000PV 64-bit chipset, and has really decent Windows performance
as well. This is your best bet I would say, as it also comes with
full motion video enhancers. Next in line would be anything based
on the Tseng Labs ET4000w32p chips. I would recommend PC Bench as
a good benchmarking program.

---

One possibility for you (since you can go up to almost $1000) is
to get a ATI Mach 64.  The 4MB VRAM configurations will only set
you back about $600 and have very good DOS as well as overall
performance.  It is considered high-end, but its well within your
price range.

---

I would stay away from VRAM, the new WRAM is dual ported, faster
and cheaper than VRAM.  Look at Matrox's new board (Triton has one
on the way as well), they significantly outperform ATI and the S3
964 in DOS performance.

---

For , the best video card is an ET4000/W32 one. And it's very
cheap too.  For games and demos, avoid Matrox, it's very very slow,
the millennium is faster than the other Matrox, but is still sooo
sloooowww...  Now, a Diamond Stealth 64 (964 for RAM) or an ATI
Mach 64 VRAM are very good too, in both windows and DOS.

---

I don't know much about the Stingray boards, but they have good
benchmark numbers and certainly have excellent word-of-mouth.

I use a Dynamite Power 2mb board, model #D902 I believe, and I have
only good things to say about it.  In fact, before I sort of
side-graded to a PCI motherboard from a VL-bus motherboard, I owned
a Dynamite Pro 2mb (-W32i), and was impressed enough with that card
that I skipped a legitimate opportunity to buy a bleeding-edge
video card and just bought the -W32p PCI version.  (At the time,
the Stingrays didn't exist.  >:)

If you go for this card, get the 2mb version.  Even if you don't
care about the couple of extra display modes, you'll benefit from
the faster (interleaved) memory access that's used with 2mb installed.
You'll also get higher refresh rates - to be honest, though, most
(aka "cheap") displays can't handle these without warping, fading,
ghosting, etc.

---

: DON'T TOUCH a Matrox Card if you are interested in DOS performance. These
: things fly under Windows, but are about 6 orders of magnitude slower
: than the fastest DOS cards (no kidding; they get about 1Mb/s to video
: memory, the fastest DOS cards get around 60Mb/s on a PCI bus).

Old news.  Matrox fixed the nasty DOS performance in the new
Millennium card.  Now it's faster than the Diamond Stealth and the
Mach64.  Not quite as fast as the ARK1000 etc but plenty fast enough
for demos and games.

---

There are some benchmarks from Vidspeed (and others too) at
http://www.dfw.net/~sdw/index.html. I don't believe 41M/s for et4k
with 16bit writes, because that would mean about 1.6 bus cycles
per write. 32bit writes yes, but not 16.

As for the results on that site, they show the ARK1k/ARK2k as
fastest, ET4k close second, but only in VLB. Nowhere near 40M/s
with 16bit writes, only about 25M as I recall.

---

(end of quotes)

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+Contact Information+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-

5.0     Who's contributed to this FAQ?

The creator was Houman Ghahremanlou, who wrote questions 1.0 to
3.0, with some small help from Trixter / Hornet's PC Demos Explained
page.  Trixter then reformatted the FAQ and became the maintainer,
and continues to add to it.

Once released, many people submitted some contributions.  Trixter
and Houman would like to thank the following people for submitting
to the FAQ:

Andras Khne <andreas.kuhne@mailbox.swipnet.se>
Anssi.Saari@lmf.eua.ericsson.se (Anssi Saari)
Blake Kadatz <blake_kadatz@mindlink.bc.ca>
Cobra@aloha.com (cobra)
Grave Digger / Hornet  <gd@ftp.cdrom.com>
Jordan Phillips <jordanp@cent.com>
Kim Davies <kimba@it.com.au>
Niklas Kring 
Paul Hsieh <qed@xenon.chromatic.com>
Peter Kendell <P.Kendell@bra0119.wins.icl.co.uk>
Phil Jones <fil@muon.demon.co.uk>
Snowman / Hornet  <r3cgm@ftp.cdrom.com>
THE ROPESTER <mjfi3sjr@umist.ac.uk>
Tero Pulkkinen <terop@kotka.cs.tut.fi>
andreas.kuhne@mailbox.swipnet.se (Andras Khne)
chuck@freeside.fc.net (Chuck Walbourn)
davidm@them.com (David Mandala)
fmah@morse.ecn.purdue.edu (Frederick Y Mah)
gerald@parker.EECS.Berkeley.EDU (THE Gerald)
grosje_s@epita.fr (Le Fongus jaune)
gt4148b@prism.gatech.edu (Stephen Carter Morgan)
jeanmarc.leang@ping.be (marmelade)
jtavn@netcom.com (Jeremy Tavan)
larsen@lal.cs.utah.edu (Steve Larsen)
matthewp@netcom.com (Matt Pritchard)
millen3@alum01.its.rpi.edu (Neal W. Miller)
mrytkola@tor.abo.fi (Markus Rytk|l{ INF)
mystical@inet.uni-c.dk (Asbjorn Andersen)
plexus@plexus.seanet.com (James B. Johnson)
ppsloan@buzzworm.cs.utah.edu (Peter Sloan)
prsam1@MFS02.cc.monash.edu.au (Paul Sampson)
rbarnhar@freenet.niagara.com (Robert Barnhardt)
rbeath@julian.uwo.ca (Stephen Beath)
rcskb@minyos.xx.rmit.EDU.AU (Kendall Bennett)
ryan.mahoney@tssbbs.com (Ryan Mahoney)
sci-slb@groper.jcu.edu.au (Stephen Banhuk)
slmyv@paradise.declab.usu.edu (Denys Larry)
whippet1@quiknet.com (Scott Tyson)

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-

5.1     How can I contact you guys to submit something?

We need help to make this FAQ bigger and better, so please mail 
us your suggestions!

Houman:         ghahrema@bowler.dacc.wisc.edu
Trixter:        trixter@mcs.com

Some things we are looking for currently:

        - A pointer to the most recent Demo Contact List
        - The *original* demo FAQ

-----

Note from Houman: I did this FAQ for the comp.sys.ibm.pc.demos
newsgroup.  I was getting tired of huge threads being created that could
have been avoided most of the time if general help was available to
public.

I accept any help, critiques, or anything else.

I would like to thank Jim Leonard (Trixter/Hornet), for without his
special help and documents, I would have not been able to create this
FAQ.

-----

Note from Trixter:  I formatted all the ftp addresses as URL's, so if
you see something like "ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/demos", it means you
should ftp to the site "ftp.cdrom.com" and then switch to the
"/pub/demos" directory.

Also, I seem to remember someone else taking a stab at a demo FAQ file
earlier, and whoever you are, I thank you... I'm deeply sorry you didn't
(seem to) find the time to keep it up and maintain it.  One of these
days I'll track it down and try to implement some of it here.

Of course, thanks go to Houman for starting this thing; greets also to
Snowman, for being a good friend and bringing me back into the scene
when I was going to quit.  Finally, thanks to all past and present
Hornet Core and Family members, for having me.

The Demo Contact List Maintainer:  rob@span.com

-----

If you have any questions, or want to help us make this FAQ bigger
and better, please email us:

Houman Ghahremanlou
ghahrema@bowler.dacc.wisc.edu           
http://www.dacc.wisc.edu/~ghahrema

Trixter / Hornet
trixter@mcs.com                         
http://www.mcs.com/~trixter/html/home/html

Thank you!
