POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.general : Off topic : Re: Off topic Server Time
28 Jul 2024 22:20:02 EDT (-0400)
  Re: Off topic  
From: David Given
Date: 18 Dec 2013 17:26:51
Message: <52b2212b$1@news.povray.org>
On 18/12/13 21:59, clipka wrote:
[...]
> The CPC 6128 was a bit better off, with its 128K of RAM; with the
> software tucked into a 16K EPROM (or a bunch of them if need be; IIRC
> the CPC series were designed to address up to 252 of them, one of which
> was the inbuilt ROM BASIC) it might have actually been able to do
> something. (Not at any significant speed of course; we're talking about
> an 8-bit processor running at 4 MHz, and no math coprocessor anywhere
> near.)

I raytraced on the BBC Micro back in 1989 --- 32kB RAM, of which 20kB
was the screen (in high colour mode), and a 6502 running at 2MHz. I
forget the details but I suspect that the ray tracer itself was in
Basic. Unfortunately it's not online, but the cover of the issue of
Acorn User with the program in it is here:

http://www.acornuser.com/acornuser/year8/issue82.jpeg

What you'll actually have *got* was a checkerboard plane with a single
mirror sphere floating above it. Resolution was probably 256x256, if you
were lucky. That would be an overnight render...

-- 
┌─── dg@cowlark.com ─────
http://www.cowlark.com ─────
│ "There does not now, nor will there ever, exist a programming
│ language in which it is the least bit hard to write bad programs." ---
│ Flon's Axiom


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