This is simply amazing.
[Don't attempt this on an emulator. This will only work on a real, honest to God, IBM 5150 with an IBM CGA card. That shouldn't be hard to get, right?] [1] [2]
I'm impressed. I didn't think it was possible to get more than 16 colors from the CGA (Computer Graphics Adapter) [3] card and here is a demo showing over 1000 colors. On a stock IBM 5150 PC [4] from 1981 (video via 8088 MPH: We Break All Your Emulators « Oldskooler Ramblings [5], from a discussion at Hacker News [6]). And for those of you who are curious as to how this was done, there're indepth articles about the graphics programming [7] (via Hacker News [8]) and the sound programming [9] (again, via Hacker News [10]).
[1] /boston/2015/04/13/one-k-cga.jpg
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHXx3orN35Y
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Graphics_Adapter
[4] http://oldcomputers.net/ibm5150.html
[5] http://trixter.oldskool.org/2015/04/07/8088-mph-we-break-all-your-emulators/
[6] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9338944
[7] http://www.reenigne.org/blog/1k-colours-on-cga-how-its-done/
[8] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9353411
[9] http://www.reenigne.org/blog/8088-pc-speaker-mod-player-how-its-done/
![[1] /boston/2015/04/13/one-k-cga.jpg](/gemini.conman.org/boston/2015/04/13/one-k-cga.jpg){kind=link}