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                                    Issue #4
                                  June 11, 1995
                HNews is a weekly newsletter for the demo scene.
          It is produced by the group Hornet at the site ftp.cdrom.com.

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Subscribers:  652  | Last Issue:  610  | Change: +42 | Size: 20,056
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CONTENTS

    --[Article Name]-------------------------[Author]--------------------

      Hornet News Introduction               Snowman, GD, and Trixter
      The Future of the Demo Platform        Maverick
      Behemoth - 120Mhz Pentium for Demos    Trixter
      Advertisement                          Impulse '95
      Subscribing
      Closing


---[Hornet News Introduction]--[Snowman, GraveDigger, and Trixter]-------------

 SM: Hello all, and welcome to the forth issue of Hornet News.
 TX: Hey, I actually made it here before Snowman.  Wow.
 GD: This week was a rather slow one. Only two articles and an advertisement.
     But I finally finish classes. :)
 SM: But GraveDigger, I thought you had classes over the summer?
 GD: My regular classes end tomorrow, and I go back July 5. 
 TX: Heh, I haven't had classes since, oh... three years now.  I make
     money now. ;)  Of course, what I wouldn't give to go back...
 GD: Our first article this week is by Maverick. It discusses different
     operating systems which could change the demo scene.
 TX: Well, the Behemoth is turning out to be the perfect PC.  I'll fill you
     in to the speedy details in the next article: "Behemoth - 120Mhz
     Pentium for Demos".
 GD: I wish I could afford one. :(
 TX: You can--Amazingly, Behemoth only cost $3000.  Not too bad,
     actually, if you have to buy a new PC.  And Optic Nerve *still* won't 
     run, so it's not *perfect*.  ;)
 SM: After the Behemoth article is an advertisement for GD's demo party..
     GraveDigger, care to elaborate?
 GD: Sure. The party is called "Impulse" and is a for-fun-only party.. not
     to be taken too seriously! Just a chance to get together and have some
     fun, demo-party style.    
 TX: How are you going to fit 30 people in your house?
 GD: Well, it's not going to be at my house anymore.    
 SM: Those are _all_ the articles we have for this week.  Can you believe
     that?
 TX: That's it?  Wow, we must be going for quality instead of quantity. :-)                       
 GD: Oh well, its still a nice collection of articles.
 SM: Well folks, this has been Snowman...
 TX: ...and the ever-busy Trixter...
 GD: ...and GD...
 <>: And we are OUTTA HERE.


---[The Future of the Demo Platform]--[Maverick]-------------------------------

 Make no mistake about it. Windows 95 is going to be *the* biggest launch in
 software history. It will be a worldwide event, accompanied by Uncle Bill
 on satellite, loads of plasticky Microsoft events and a deluge of media
 coverage. Why should you O demo coder, artist or musician, give a
 proverbial monkey's?

 Well, coz Win95/98 is bound to make a significant impact on the number of
 desktops that run a DOS/Windows combination. Now Winever does allow you to
 install *without* an underlying DOS install. That's bad. It's the reason
 why OS/2 demos don't exist and Windows NT demos haven't even been thought
 of. But, despite Microsoft's lies to the contrary, they haven't dispensed
 with DOS entirely.

 You can play games and demos designed for DOS only (ie. everything worth
 playing/looking at) but they will have to run through the horribly flaky
 DOS box. Yes, it's horribly flaky. I'm not just making this up, BTW. I have
 installed and run the beast and I'm thoroughly unimpressed. It's slow,
 bug-ridden and unreliable - ie. a perfect beta release.

 It seems that only DOS-4G or other protected mode progs run reasonably well
 under Windoze 95-disks-to-install. The graphics interface is something
 called WinG, which is a rather nice API through which all graphics
 functions must be made. Nevertheless, it's what it's sitting on that causes
 the problems. Give me #include <jugi's_graph_lib.h> anytime or even (gasp!)
 SEGMENT WORD PUBLIC USE32 as a starting point.

 So what?

 DOS's death has been trumpeted around the world for about 10 years now. It
 hasn't died because people still make money from it. It won't die because
 people use it, much like languages that are still used (spoken languages I
 mean) won't go away just because some professor says so. But the installed
 base of DOS only machines will decrease, slowly, but surely. And, unless
 you've written your demo to work under a DPMI server, Win95 users probably
 won't benefit.

 Some demo scene members may not care. The demo scene is pretty much an
 underground culture anyway and has needs and tastes that differ from the
 rest of the computer world. (Example: *Everyone* outside the demo scene
 loves Creative Labs. *Nearly* everyone inside the demo scene think they have
 a major attitude problem and that their products stink and that their SDKs
 should be deleted unmercifully. Why? :-)

 My conclusion is simple: let the world struggle with Win95/2000. Demo scene
 members and game coders are the only ones who *really* appreciate demos
 anyway and they're not likely to be rushing out and installing Bill's
 Folly. (Example 2: My wife just said "very nice" when I showed her DOPE and
 then without missing a beat said "would you like some more coffee?") But
 then she does have 1,000,000 redeeming features ;-).

 Watch out for Win95. But keep up with that DOS and pmode coding...

 Next time: Linux. It's free. It's an operating system. It's frightening
 because its Unix and if you've never used Unix it's a whole new ball game.
 BUT - it can run DOOM in a window, it has full Gravis and SB support,
 X-windows (also free), C,C++, and ASM tools included, Mod and S3M players
 (I kid you not they're as good as DMP and multitask too!), CD-ROM audio
 players, MIDI players, games with source, and paint progs (free) that could
 rival DP-II in a pinch.

 Maverick/SerenIty


---[Behemoth - 120Mhz Pentium for Demos]--[Trixter]----------------------------

 The Behemoth--A review of the Gateway 2000 Pentium 120 MHz Computer

 Greetings, all.  I am writing to you from the Behemoth--the Pentium 120 I
 received last Friday from Gateway 2000.  This computer has the distinction
 of being the fastest DOSbox in the world (at least for the next two months,
 anyway, until the Pentium 133 and 150 come out).  For everyone's benefit,
 I've not only described the machine, but provided some observations related
 to the demo scene, game players, business use, and people running
 UNIX/Linux.

 -----

 External Observations:

 - The motherboard comes with 4 PCI slots and 4 ISA slots (not ISA/VLB).  As
   a result, no VLB boards can be installed, obviously.

 - The PCI controller is on the motherboard :-( but can be disabled if
   necessary :-/ and is very fast anyway. :-)

 - The keyboard connector is that small bus-like connector--it's a good
   thing I like this keyboard, because I think I'm stuck with it.

 - The Bus mouse that came with it plugs into the motherboard.  My trackball
   has taken a leave of absence because I have discovered that Bus mice are
   more accurate and smoother than serial mice--probably because a serial
   mouse only communicates at 1200 baud.  :-)

 -----

 Internal Observations:

 - The BIOS is an AMI, but oddly, the copyright date on it says 1992 (?).
 No matter; when you enter it, it's a full Plug-And-Play BIOS, and it even
 has some nice options like automatically configuring the hard drive
 parameters when you install a new hard drive.  It also simulates
 Plug-And-Play for older ("legacy") ISA cards by allowing you to "disable"
 IRQs for devices you know are already in use.  Finally, the BIOS has full
 on-line help, which is extremely useful when you're trying to decide if you
 should modify the "Static Ram Cache Pipeline Stall threshold" parameter.
 ;-)

 - The video board shipped was an STB Trio, which uses an S3 chipset that I
 can't determine right now.  It is a windows accelerator. The DOS
 performance is better than I expected, and is quite reasonable for the
 technology.

 - The hard drive is *fast*, even for an IDE.  It surprised me. (It's a
 Western Digital Caviar 1 GB.)  However, it came as one large >1GB
 partition, which used 32K clusters, which is incredibly wasteful.  When I
 repartitioned it to <1GB, I *gained* over 300 MB free (because I have lots
 of small files)!!  I wonder if many people know about this...

 - The 16 MB of RAM is not "normal" RAM--it's a new, faster type of ram
 called "EDO" RAM (for Extended Data Out).  It requires less refreshing from
 the CPU, so the CPU has about 10-15% more time to do other things.  The end
 result is that a machine with EDO RAM performs 15% faster then if it had
 normal RAM.

 - The internal CDROM drive is an IDE/ATAPI quad-speed CDROM drive from
 Sony.  However, it's not a normal CDROM drive--it's a three-disc CDROM
 jukebox!  While it's certainly better than switching/swapping CDROMs all
 the time, all that glitters is not gold.  For instance, I encountered many
 annoying problems:

    - It takes about 10 seconds for a CD to swap in and out of the drive, so
    if a program tries to auto-detect hardware or look for a file on all
    local drives, the CDROM drive churns away for over half a minute
    swapping all three discs in and out.  This starts to get annoying if the
    installation program keeps doing this.

    - This same problem applies to Windows multimedia device programs that
    can play CD-audio; it laboriously checks all three discs to check for
    audio before giving you control.

    - The drive has two speeds:  150K per second and 600K per second.
    Sometimes, especially with older multimedia programs, the 600K is too
    fast and the video playback suffers (video running ahead of audio, jerky
    playback, etc.)  It would be good if the drive could be "told" to slow
    down from time to time, but the option doesn't exist.

 -----

 Hardware Compatibility:

 - The Gravis Ultrasound was the first peripheral installed, and it worked
 flawlessly.  (I wish I could say the same about the driver
 installation--Gravis makes good hardware, but their software/drivers suck.)
 This is different than a Pentium 90 I had to work with earlier, which did
 not like the GUS and wouldn't let it work properly (stuttering sound,
 complaining about no NMI, etc.)

 - The Video Capture board was next, and it worked as well, but I had to
 move the port address, memory address, and IRQ to a different location,
 oddly enough.  While the Bus mouse interface was to blame for taking over
 IRQ 12, I think the blame falls on the capture board, not the computer, for
 having to move the port and memory addresses.

 -----

 Observations for DemoScene Members:

 - Mod Players that worked correctly were DMP 3 and 4, Capamod 2.22, and
 Cubic Player .96.

 - Demos that ran flawlessly:  Second Reality/FC, Crystal Dream 2/Triton,
 Big Deal/ACME, Holistic/Cascada, Heartquake/Iguana, Symbology/Admire,
 DOPE/Complex. All ran in the *full framerate*, with the exception of parts
 of Holistic, CD2, and DOPE, which are CPU-intensive effects. (Those demos
 ran at about half the full framerate, with the exception of Holistic, with
 it's Phong (?) Race car, which was about 10 fps.)

 (If you'd like me to custom-test a demo or program that I haven't mentioned
 above for you, go ahead and email me at trixter@mcs.com and I'll email you
 back with the results.)

 Some real treats were:

    - The chessboard in CD2 runs at least about 35 fps--way cool.

    - All light-sourced texture mapping and "flying letters" in Holistic ran
    at the full framerate with no "shearing" of any images.

    - Symbology/Admire was good to begin with--now it really shines.

    - The Final Option ran on this computer--it wouldn't on my 486.

 Some disappointments were:

    - DOPE doesn't look much better than on a 486-66 VLB (maybe if the Phong
    was real... ;)

    - Second Reality's end part (with the flying ship in a city) has such a
    high framerate that you can see just how coarse the fixed-point math is;
    sadly, it looks *worse* than if it were at a low framerate, where you
    wouldn't notice it.

    And of course:

    - Optic Nerve/Silents PC *still* doesn't work!  Argh!

 -----

 Observations for Game Players:

 Before trying to run any game, I suggest you have a config-file
 database/menu for getting different games to work; I use a program called
 "autocon" that works well.  Using one of these programs is better than the
 DOS 6 [menu] configuration because if a game installation automatically
 changes your autoexec.bat/config.sys files, you can always restore the
 original if you don't like it, or suck the changes right into the database
 under that program's header.

 Games that were tested were Mortal Kombat 2, Wing Commander 3, and Under a
 Killing Moon.

    - Wing Commander 3 ran faster in 640x480 resolution on the P120 than it
    did on a 486-66 in 320x200 with local-bus. (This is also partially due
    to a PCI video card as opposed to a Local Bus card on the 486).
    Needless to say, it was extremely impressive!  The video did not skip,
    either. Loading the spaceflight engine took about 45 seconds on the
    486--it took only *5* seconds on the P120.  (This is due to a faster
    CDROM drive as well).

    - Mortal Kombat 2 took a bit of tweaking to come up.  After several
    lockups, I removed anything that Mortal Kombat 2 didn't need from my
    config.sys or autoexec.bat, leaving only the ultrasound environment
    variables and smartdrv (disk cache).  Then, it performed flawlessly.

    - Under a Killing Moon ran beautifully, and not having to swap CDs was
    fantastic.  Full-screen 640x480x256 rendering was around 12-30 fps,
    depending on scene content.  A lot of people have asked about the video
    speed rating Under a Killing Moon provides, so here it is, along with
    others for comparison (all numbers are rounded downward):

        386/40, ISA Cirrus Logic 5424:  3000 KBytes per second
        486/66, ISA Cirrus Logic 5424:  5000 KBytes per second
        486/66, VLB Cirrus Logic 5428:  8000 KBytes per second
        486/66, PCI ATI Mach 64:        16000 KBytes per second
        P5/120, PCI S3 (unknown):       23000 KBytes per second

 -----

 Observations for Business Use:

 There's not much to say here, because the machine was built for business
 use from the start.  Since the crux of business today is Microsoft Windows,
 it came with the following Windows enhancements:

    - 32-bit file access turned on

    - 32-bit disk access provided by a special Western Digital 32-bit disk
    driver

    - Windows-accelerated video chipset, with appropriate
    drivers

 Microsoft Access, Excel, and Word all load in two seconds, from click
 (mouse double-click) to blink (blinking cursor waiting for input).  And no,
 there is no floating-point math bug in this Pentium, so all numerical
 analysis programs return correct information every time.

 -----

 Observations for Linux Users:

 At the time of this review, I have not had a chance to fully work with all
 of Linux's features, like the IDE CDROM interface.  However, the OS itself
 installed easily and dealt with my >1024 cylinder hard drives without a
 hitch.  There were no apparent slow-downs that could have been caused by
 timing slip-ups.

 -----

 Even with it's "bleeding edge" problems, I recommend this machine without
 any hesitation to anyone requiring the utmost speed in DOS.  If you use
 plan to use it for Windows, I'd get a faster Windows video accelerator; if
 you plan to use it for UNIX, I'd get SCSI peripherals instead of IDE.
 Otherwise, this thing is a screaming demo/game lightning bolt!

 -Jim Leonard trixter@ftp.cdrom.com


---[Advertisement]--[Impulse '95]----------------------------------------------

 Brett Neely (aka Gravedigger/Hornet) and I (aka Phoenix/Kosmic) are
 organizing a small-scale demo-party to be held in Syracuse, NY, USA, on
 July 28-30, 1995, called Impulse.

 We are expecting only around 30-80 people (among them members of Kosmic,
 Psychic Monks, and 3Some), but still need help.  We are looking for
 possible companies to sponsor and people who can contribute equipment
 (although we can get most of what ne need), or just help out.

 If you can, your help is invaluable.  Or, if you would like to attend,
 please contact us so we can put you on our mailing list.

 EMail GD at: gd@ftp.cdrom.com
    or me at: vossa@rpi.edu

 Thanks.. - Andy Voss - Phoenix/Kosmic -


---[Subscribing]---------------------------------------------------------------

 There are three public newsletters produced by Hornet:

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---[Closing]-------------------------------------------------------------------

 For questions and comments, you can contact us at:

   Snowman     |   r3cgm@ftp.cdrom.com - general stuff, o1 + HNews newsletters
   GraveDigger |      gd@ftp.cdrom.com - music reviews, #trax, TraxWeekly
   Trixter     | trixter@ftp.cdrom.com - code, newsgroups, file permissions
   Jeff        |    jeff@ftp.cdrom.com - unusual stuff, WWW, NAID96 organizer
   Dan Wright  |     dmw@inca.gate.net - Freedom CD

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