The Bad Apple!! video with its silhouette animation style has long been a staple graphics demo for low-end hardware, a more stylish alternative to the question “Will it run DOOM?”. It’s normal for it to be rendered onto a screen by a small microcomputer or similar but as [Ian Ward] demonstrates in an unusual project, it’s possible to display the video without any processor being involved. Instead he’s used a clever arrangement involving a 32K byte EPROM driving a HD44780-compatible parallel alphanumeric LCD display.
While 32K bytes would have seemed enormous back in the days of 8-bit computing, even when driving only a small section of an alphanumeric LCD it’s still something of a struggle to express the required graphics characters. This feat is achieved by the use of a second EPROM, which carries a look-up table.
It’s fair to say that the result which can be seen in the video below the break isn’t the most accomplished rendition of Bad Apple!! that we’ve seen, but given the rudimentary hardware upon which it’s playing we think that shouldn’t matter. Why didn’t we think of doing this in 1988!
That icon looks like Michigan state mirrored.
32 KB would have been on the small size, for an NES cartridge.
Impressive!
“This gives us about 5 bytes of data per frame of video, or a constant video bitrate of 1.2 kb/s.”
1200 Baud? That’s the speed of classic VHF Packet-Radio! 😃
cool!
Bad Apple has become a challenge like running DooM on pregnancy tests. I absolutely love both to show off great skills in hacking devices or making your own.
Bad Apple!! but it’s 240 7-segment displays:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrSkWpVoKHM
Very impressed!
I paused and saw that some of the segments at the edges are brighter than others — on closer inspection, I think it’s an artifact, but it puts me in mind of doing some rudimentary antialiasing by driving the segments with PWM. Not sure it’d do enough to be worth it, but…
I think Bad Apple!! on a pregnancy test would be kind of disturbing.
Bad EEPROM?
“Why didn’t we think of doing this in 1988!”
Probably b/c once you convert from 1988 to 2022 dollars you are looking at $300 worth of hardware back then. Not to mention the EEPROM programmer and a PC to run it.
We have it so good today!
We do. :)
From bullet hell to breadboard hell