DOS ain't dead

256b.com was the 256 byte (or less) DOS demoscene site which sadly is no longer online (well the site is up but has been taken over by a link spammer). For anyone unfamiliar with the past 256b.com site, there is a good overview article called 256b intros round-table by Adok/Hugi.

As above the original 256b.com is no more, fortunately however archive.org stored a copy of the main archive ZIP file (archive taken in 2007) this file can be directly downloaded from archive.org using this link: 256b_complete_demos_archive.zip (2.3MB).

256.com as it was in 2008 can be browsed via this archive.org link.

hardcode.untergrund.net is a similar site but covering up to 64k which is still online. It also has an archive containing 64k demos and less which can be downloaded (but it is 275MB).

Thanks. I have somewhere archive of 256B games if you are interested I can upload it.

---
DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

> Thanks. I have somewhere archive of 256B games if you are interested I can
> upload it.

No need if Archive.org works (and it does, just tested). Then again, it's not big (2 MB), so feel free.

Following Paul's link to the 56byte PCX viewer by Arminio Grgic which won the the tiny PCX competition (archive link) reminded me of the Hugi Size Coding Competition Series which Arminio has also entered in the past.

It had been a while since I last checked in on the Hugi Size Coding Competition's, I noted a 2009 competition #28 - The "Hugi USB" Compo which was if you've not seen it/guessed already; a USB related competition:

"...This time your task is to retrieve the device descriptor from an attached USB device. Yep, you must detect the controller, find its I/O base, and control the USB controller, polling for a device connection, then display the attached device's descriptor..."

There were only 3 entries :( In size order: 438 bytes, 352 bytes (example entry), and 233 bytes. The example entry was NOT counted, so "officially" there were sadly only 2 entries with the winning 233 byte entry being coded by Tapani Utriainen (aka nadir/RAGE best known as one of the coders of the Gathering 97 DOS demo Robotnik).

It is also worth noting that there is also now a Hugi Size Coding Competition Discussion board. The older competition section of the forum (as linked to off the main page) contains the download links.

> It had been a while since I last checked in on the
> Hugi Size Coding
> Competition's, I noted a 2009 competition
> #28 - The
> "Hugi USB" Compo which was if you've not seen it/guessed already; a
> USB related competition:

Didn't they also have a 64-byte contest a while back? Also, what about the maze generator? Ghost ANSI display thingy? Sniper (Ben Lunt) seemed to organize a lot of 'em with Adok's (sp?) help.

(I'll admit I haven't kept track either, and I've never entered nor probably ever will since my skills aren't good enough. My best "work" on shrinking was reducing BEFI.COM, which I basically rewrote in Rexx and Pascal for fun anyways.)

> ... with the winning 233 byte entry being coded
> by Tapani Utriainen (aka
> nadir/RAGE best known as
> one of the coders of the Gathering 97 DOS demo
> Robotnik).

Tried under DOSBox under Lucid Puppy here, very very impressive. "Needs 486 DX w/ 8 MB RAM, but Pentium strongly recommended", heh. Man, have we jumped the shark (technology-wise) since then or what?!

> Didn't they also have a 64-byte contest a while back?
Probably. I remember there were a few. Indeed I started to kick off a bootsector competition myself in 1996 but dropped the idea when I got a new very busy job 2months later.

> and I've never entered nor
Me neither! :( I did write a bootsector game "example entry" for my planned competition (446 bytes worm game) none of which saw the light of the day as just as I finished my example/competitions rules I started my new job.

When Adok later launched his Hugi Size competition in April 1998, I was delighted that it was a nibbles (worm) game one, so I found the time to reduce my game down to 76 bytes. However I never submitted it (I wish I had now!) as I soon realized that I wasn't good enough. The winner was 48 bytes!

Separately in 1997 I took my asm game and used it as the core of a high-level TP worm game which I spent ages pimping by writing many development tools and libraries for. The reason why, is the released game was going to be a single DOS 16bit NE EXE with resources built in as Windows resources and editable under Windows (all resources stored as FNT format, BMP, string tables etc).

From a coding perspective not a small undertaking for one person particularly as I started from scratch. Annoyingly I got 99% of the way there by working all hours before work got very busy (Y2K!) and then even busier still (more work after Y2K) and in the end I just shelved it all - moving more to the web/Windows.

No plans to release the games (maybe one day) but I have at least dusted off some of the related libraries, utils, e.g. RJDUMP (which in turn is related to RJLINK - indeed a lot of my own development tools can trace their history back to damn worm games!) So every time I see a tiny coding competition I am reminded that I have my own small scale Duke Nukem Forever not only in the form of a several worm games but also in the form of lots of related utilities. Hence why I decided to work on "RJDOS" as a long term project as I figure can do something more useful/interesting with my past code and more recent code that way.

However as size is important to ROMOS and also to RJDOS for my own use, I have also dusted off more size related code (hence TP size reducing posts) and indeed this is the key reason for no newer releases (apart from having little keyboard time) as I have been working on size reduction/low level techniques from which I can then scale things up. Hence also my renewed interest in size coding competitions to "remind" me of some of the methods I can use.

> probably ever will since my skills aren't good enough.
Rubbish. Shrinking stuff just takes patience and time :) Lots of both ;)

> My best "work" on shrinking
Ok. Well just keep building upon your past work and you will get better.

> Rexx and Pascal for fun anyways.)
I understand :)

> Tried under DOSBox under Lucid Puppy here,
To be honest I just cheated and just watched earlier with Youtube :)

> very very impressive.
It was ok. Not the best demo I have seen but better than I could code myself.

> "Needs 486 DX w/ 8 MB RAM, but Pentium strongly recommended", heh. Man,
> have we jumped the shark (technology-wise) since then or what?!
Indeed we have. I've recently looked back at the stuff our demogroup were doing in 95/96 and thought what crap but then I have remembered what we were doing with what little we had then, e.g. before the world wide web, before cheap long distant phonecalls (when I used to spend a small fortune just obtaining the latest scene stuff for the rest of our group/friends, e.g. music trackers).

Still after recently reading what the guys behind Warajevo were doing around the same time and knowing as I do now what I know how difficult life was elsewhere in the world. I am also very much aware that the members of our group still it easy compared to others. The less you have to work with the more inventive you become.