doom

89 Articles

A green PCB with an ISA card slot and various connectors and components. The text "DISAPPOINTMENT LPC to ISA Adapter" is printed in the bottom left of the board.

ISA Over TPM To Your PC

March 23, 2023 by 27 Comments

Sometimes you really want to use your legacy SoundBlaster instead of emulating it for classic games. While modern PCs don’t have ISA slots, [TheRasteri] is fixing this shortcoming with his dISAppointment board. (via Adafruit)

ISA was the standard card bus for PCs during the golden age of DOS gaming, and many of these games will still run on modern x86 hardware. Unfortunately, they run into hiccups with regards to sound since they were designed to specifically support ISA-based sound cards. [TheRasteri] found he could access the ISA bus lurking in modern computers through the Low Pin Count (LPC) bus which is exposed on the TPM port in many modern motherboards.

Testing the card with DOOM, he gets music and sound effects with no emulation required. Open Source files and a more detailed video are on the way, so stay tuned if you’re hankering for more ISA goodness on your modern rigs.

We’re no strangers to ISA here. We’ve covered the basics of the ISA bus as well as plugging ISA cards into USB and how you can emulate vintage ISA cards with a Raspberry Pi and FPGA.

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DOOM Ported To A Single LEGO Brick

March 18, 2023 by 18 Comments

By now you’ve all seen the tiny LEGO brick with a working screen in it. The work of one [James “Ancient” Brown], it was truly a masterpiece of miniaturization and creativity. Since then, [James] hasn’t stopped innovating. Now, he’s demoing a playable version of DOOM running on a single plastic brick.

We’ve covered the construction of these astounding screen bricks before. Long story short, [James] designed a tiny PCB that hosts an RP2040 microcontroller which is then hooked up to a tiny OLED screen. The components are placed in a silicone mold, which is then filled with transparent resin to form the brick. The screen is then powered via contacts in the bottom, much like older-style LEGO motors.

Early experiments involved running various graphics to emulate a spaceship dashboard, but [James] has now gone much further. He’s implemented RP2040-doom to run the game. It uses tilt controls thanks to an accelerometer, combined with capacitive touch controls for shooting. The monochrome OLED is driven very fast with a special library of [James’] own creation to create three levels of grayscale to make the game actually visible and (just barely) playable.

It’s a hack, of course, and the controls are far from perfect. Nobody’s speed-running E1M1 on [James’s] LEGO brick, to be sure. Perchance. With that said, it’s still a glorious piece of work nonetheless. Just imagine, sitting with friends, and announcing you’re going to play some DOOM — only to pluck a piece of LEGO out of your pocket and start blasting away at demons.

Just because [James] doesn’t know when to quit, we’re going to lay down the gauntlet. Let’s get network play happening on these things, yeah?
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A Milliwatt Of DOOM

February 26, 2023 by 36 Comments

The seminal 1993 first-person shooter from id Software, DOOM, has become well-known as a test of small computer platforms. We’ve seen it on embedded systems far and wide, but we doubt we’ve ever seen it consume as little power as it does on a specialized neural network processor. The chip in question is a Syntiant NDP200, and it’s designed to be the always-on component listening for the wake word or other trigger in an AI-enabled IoT device.

DOOM running on as little as a milliwatt of power makes for an impressive PR stunt at a trade show, but perhaps more interesting is that the chip isn’t simply running the game, it’s also playing it. As a neural network processor it contains the required smarts to learn how to play the game, and in the simple circular level it’s soon picking off the targets with ease.

We’ve not seen any projects using these chips as yet, which is hardly surprising given their niche marketplace. It is however worth noting that there is a development board for the lower-range sibling chip NDP101, which sells for around $35 USD. Super-low-power AI is within reach.

OG DOOM Shows Off The Origins Of Multi-Monitor

February 7, 2023 by 13 Comments

We have a thing for DOOM, and we admit it. The source was released, and clever hackers have ported the engine to every system imaginable. It’s a right of passage, when hacking a machine, to run DOOM on it — be it a VoIP phone, or tractor. But the original 1993 release does have a few notable tricks, and there’s something to be said for recreating that experience on period hardware. And that’s what we’re covering today: [Tech Tangents] discovered DOOM’s multi-monitor support, and built a 4-computer cluster to show it off.

There is a catch, of course. DOOM 1.1 has the multi-monitor support, and under-the-hood, it works by running a copy of the game on individual computers, and controlling the drones over the network. As the game’s network code was updated for version 1.2, the multi-monitor feature was axed to make the network code easier to maintain. So, find a 1.1 shareware release, install it on a DOS machine with IPX drivers, and start each iteration with a -net flag. Use -left and -right to set the drones to the appropriate view. And that view is ninety degrees left and right.

Maybe not ideal, but at the time it was one of the first games to have any sort of multi-monitor support at all. Likely inspired by a commercial flight simulator setup. Either way, it’s a neat feature, and kudos to [Tech Tangents] for showing off this obscure feature of a beloved classic!

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A pink and white Leapster GS handheld console sits on a wooden table. It has a white D-pad and two large pink action buttons. A power cord extends from the bottom and a headphone cable comes out the top.

RetroArch On A LeapFrog Leapster GS

January 30, 2023 by 12 Comments

Retro games are a blast, and even more so when you can bring the fun on the go. [mac2612] has developed a custom retroarch-based firmware for the Leapster GS and LeapPad2. (via Bringus Studios on YouTube)

We covered Linux on the Leapster before, but Retroleap seems better documented (and still up on the internet). Installation is done over the command line with sshflash, also by [mac2612], after booting the Leapster or LeapPad2 into “Surgeon Mode.” Since the stock bootloader remains intact, you can always return the LeapFrog to its default state if anything gets wiggy by reflashing the device via the LeapFrog Connect App.

The default system includes emulators for NES, SNES, GBA, Genesis, Atari 800, and MAME. Performance varies, but some PS1 games have even run successfully on the device.

If you’d like to see some other LeapFrog hacks, checkout this LeapFrog TV Running DOOM or Composite Video Out on the DIDJ.

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Not Can It Run DOOM, But Can DOOM Run It?

December 25, 2022 by 15 Comments

It’s the standard test for a hardware hack, half serious half in jest, “Can it run DOOM?”. The iconic early-90s shooter from id software has made an appearance on everything from toothbrushes to LEGO bricks, but nobody has yet posed the opposite question: Can DOOM run it?“. It’s one answered by [Danny Spencer], who has proved that it’s possible to perform computational tasks in the game by producing a working adding machine in a DOOM level.

If you’re familiar with the folks who build working computers within Minecraft, this is in a similar vein. Game elements are used to create logic elements, and from there more complex systems can be assembled. DOOM doesn’t have the in-game logic that Minecraft has, but by clever combination of monster behaviour with in-game actions involving rooms, buttons, and doors, it’s possible to create the simplest of building blocks, the NAND gate.

The video below the break shows the adder in action, first in operation (we like the monster-driven display!), and then a tour of the logic area with its rooms full of computational monsters. It’s important to note that this isn’t a computer, he hasn’t proved it as Turing complete, and that the maximum size of a DOOM level whatever it is will impose an upper limit on what can be done. But it does show that in theory at least a computer can be made in DOOM, and we’re sure people will continue this work.

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Merry Christmas! Rip And Tear!

December 7, 2022 by 6 Comments

If you want a little mayhem on your Christmas tree, you can check out [Sprite_tm]’s tiny PC Christmas ornament. With 3D printing, that isn’t such a tall order, but [Sprite]’s does have a unique ability: it plays DOOM, as you can see in the video below.

The device uses an ESP32, and while [Sprite] had ported the iconic shooter to the microcontroller before, he decided to use a Game Boy port that is more lightweight instead. There were a few reasons for the choice, including the ability to do Bluetooth so you could connect controllers so you can play the game. The only catch was he had to pull off the flash memory and replace it with a larger one (see the second video below).

Granted, the screen is tiny, so it is sort of a novelty. But if you want to have a go, the files are all there. As you might expect, there is a tiny battery and the circuitry required to recharge it, as well. We’d probably make an adapter to let it charge from the Christmas lights, but that can wait for version 2.

The input device handling is a bit strange. Bluetooth BLE devices will automatically grab an input device that is in pairing mode. There is no provision for connecting using the “normal” Bluetooth mechanism. A fun project and you could use the case for some other tiny projects, too. A larger flash on an ESP32 has lots of possibilities, as well.

If you need a primer on the ESP32, we got it. If you want to play DOOM on something truly strange, try seven-segment displays.

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