Demosplash 2012


In case you haven't noticed, the highlight of this event is a thorough exposure to the demoscene, primarily through screening many classic and modern demos on a bunch of platforms. Between demos, we'll be playing famous music tracks in the chiptune and demo-tune genre for a more awesome total experience.


Even if you've never watched a demo before in your life, you'll enjoy seeing the ridiculous pile of hardware we have lined up and laugh at us running around like maniacs cabling them all up as we zip through the lineup and typing out obscure incantations to make each one do its magic. And if you are demo junkie, you'll be horrified and amused at the chance to watch all this in one place.


(Bear with us as we update this page with new details for 2012...)

Demo machines

With very few exceptions (to save you all from absolutely insane loading times or to cope with last minute hardware failures), all demos are being shown on real, original hardware using one of the largest collections actively maintained for this purpose in the United States.


Amiga

Amiga 500 (NTSC-US and PAL-UK)

  • RAM expansion
  • Indivision ECS flickerfixer/scandoubler
  • DVI!

Amiga 1200 (NTSC/PAL switchable)
  • Blizzard 1260 (68060) accelerator with 64MB RAM
  • DVI!


Apple

Apple IIGS

  • Transwarp GS accelerator
  • RAM expansion
  • DVI!

Apple Lisa -- showing the one known demo


Atari (8-bit)

Atari 130XE (PAL-AUS)

  • RAM expansion
  • VBXE 2 VGA mod
  • sio2sd SD-card floppy drive replacement
Atari 800XL (NTSC)
  • Supervideo s-video mod
  • VBXE 2 VGA mod
  • SIO2PC usb floppy drive replacement


Commodore (8-bit)

Commodore 64 (NTSC-US and PAL-UK)

  • Chameleon VGA output + more


PC

DOS

  • Gravis Ultrasound Max (1MB RAM), PnP (2MB RAM), and Extreme
  • Soundblaster 16
  • Stereo Covox parallel port sound card
Linux
Windows
  • Modern gaming PC with nvidia graphics


Sinclair

Timex-Sinclair 1000 (aka ZX81)

  • 16KB RAM expansion
  • ZXpand sdcard/RAM interface
ZX Spectrum 48k
  • Zaxon AY sound addon
ZX Spectrum 128k+ BBQ
  • Betadisk floppy interface
ZX Spectrum +2
Speccy2010 FPGA clone of Pentagon


Texas Instruments

TI-99/4A -- showing the one known demo

  • PEBox expansion
  • 5.25" floppy drive
  • RAM expansion


Wild

Atmel Atmega microcontroller

Tektronix oscilloscope




Other Inventory


A number of other platforms will be available for display and possibly use, but are not planned for running demos.

Amiga


Amiga 2000

  • Video toaster


Atari


Atari 2600

  • s-video mod
Atari 1040ST


Commodore (8-bit)


Commodore 64C (NTSC)

Commodore 128 (NTSC)
VIC-20 (NTSC)


Magnavox


Odyssey^2

  • "The Voice" audio expansion


NeXT


NeXTstation Turbo Color

  • VGA output adapter


Vectrex




Video Hardware


Traditionally, half the fun of demos has been getting them to run. This is especially tricky now given that most of these machines came long before DVI or even VGA. We have a huge pile of video converters, many custom-developed, to get the best possible video out of each machine. All demos will be shown on the big screen through the best means possible.

  • TV-frequency analog RGB to s-video
  • TV-frequency analog RGB to VGA (two ways)
  • RGBI (CGA) to analog RGB
  • Development snapshot of the Rastertron Retrovue end-to-end digital many-to-DVI converter (learn more)
  • Sync-on-green splitter




DVI Project


Learn more about this at the Video signals talk.