8088 Corruption Explained
Posted by Trixter on May 13, 2007
I had hoped to completely update the 8088 Corruption webpages before posting this, but it’s going to be at least another week and people have been asking me for it, so: An edited video of my NOTACON/Block Party 8088 Corruption Explained talk is available at archive.org. All of the embarrassing and missing parts have been fixed, added, edited, massaged, spindled, and mutilated, and it should be completely watchable. I replaced most of the bad video-camera-aimed-at-the-monitor footage with the actual conversion footage, filled in the hey-where’d-my-electricity-go? missing section with a voiceover, replaced all filmed slides with the actual slides, and took out two embarrassing swears (embarrassing not because they were swear words, but because I was nervous and stumbled over them).
While it is tempting to watch the flash version in a browser, I went through a great deal of trouble to make the MPEG-2 version perfect, including true 60Hz video in places. If you can spare the time, grab the MPEG-2 version and watch it on a real set-top dvd player for full effect. (Or a software player that isn’t broken; for example, use my favorite MPEG-2 player, VLC, with Deinterlace set to Linear.)
Work and home have been particularly busy this week and will be next week, so I apologize in advance for not having the extra movies, updated 8088 player, full source code, etc. available on the website yet. When I do, I’ll make a note of it in this blog.
Oldskooler Ramblings 
phoenix said
i actually bought the notacon dvd on my way out. so i guess the outtakes now make it special. :) i’ll still download your mpeg-2 video, i got hd space to waste.
Tomer Gabel said
So the entire audio/video stream is uncompressed on disk? That makes sense from a CPU perspective, but it also leads to interesting possibilities if you can find some spare CPU time for decompression (Huffman decompression is very CPU-efficient).
At any rate great work and great presentation, I at least enjoyed it…
Brolin Empey said
Great video! :)
I used your suggested VLC configuration on Linux to watch the MPEG-2 version on a TFT monitor. I noticed an annoying lag between when I pressed the pause button and when the video actually paused. Is this normal? I kept pausing the video because I needed more time to study the slides.
In the introduction, you do not specify exactly which model of PC 8088 Corruption is running on. I am guessing this is because you are using your XT in the presentation after your PC (model 5150) motherboard got a short, and you did not want to explain this. Am I correct?
Are you running Windows on an Apple laptop? Or is Windows running on what looks like a desktop PC in the video?
I think the ‘Z’ in “ZX Spectrum” should be pronounced “zed” rather than “zee”, because the ZX Spectrum is from the UK. :) Of course, I am biased since I am Canadian. ;)
Trixter said
I have no idea what is causing the pauses. Certainly not my MPEG-2 — it works fine on a set-top player connected to my TV.
While I gave the original 8088 Corruption demo on my 5150, the demonstration used one of my 5160s. This is primarily because the 5150 is more rare and the only one I have, and I didn’t want to risk damaging it on the car ride there/back.
The laptop is an IBM Thinkpad T41 with an Apple sticker on the front, which I applied precisely to confuse people :-)
As for Z vs. Zed, in my experience “zed” is usually only used when you are referring to *just* the letter z, but is not used when spelling something, ie. “zee-ee-bee-ahr-aye spells ‘zebra'”. But that’s moot since I’m American and I’ll use the local colloquialisms, thank you very much ;-)
Trixter said
Tomer: Huffman isn’t terrible but it’s still beyond the realm of realtime decompression on an 8088. LZ77-ish methods are better, and simple deltas are best, and executable code that directly makes those deltas is perfect. Guess which one I’m working on :)
Brolin Empey said
I *thought* I saw the coloured IBM logo on the corner of the laptop lid, but I was not sure. I need to start trusting myself more! :P