Posts from a modern and retro developer, and also amateur photographer.| XtoF’s Lair
This article will demonstrate that, contrary to some widespread believes, the SEGA Saturn was engineered to be good at 3D.| XtoF’s Lair
The Mac Mini G4 promises to be compatible with almost every Macintosh software released until the early 2000s. This article explains why and puts the machine to the test.| XtoF’s Lair
Essential steps to keep your original Xbox in top shape for years to come. In this article, we’ll show you how to recap the console, upgrade the hard drive, and repair any corrosion.| XtoF’s Lair
This article presents the photographic capabilities of the iPhone 15 Pro and details its strong points in order to see if it is suitable for “serious” photography. A lot of sample pictures are displayed and can be downloaded in RAW format, so the reader can make his own opinion about the technical merit of the photos.| XtoF’s Lair
AV1 is the codec preferred by Internet streaming services for serving videos. But not every SoC comes with a hardware decoder. What is the cost, in terms of power usage and battery consumption, of using an AV1 software decoder?| XtoF’s Lair
The 80386 is the most important CPU Intel ever produced. It confirmed the importance of the x86 line and sparked a computing revolution. And yet it almost never saw the light of day. This is the history of the 386 and why it was such a landmark.| XtoF’s Lair
This article compares the performance of a Macbook Pro running on an Apple Silicon M2 Pro against a PC Desktop running on an AMD Ryzen 3950X. Application tests are done using Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop, and a voluminous code base is compiled.| XtoF’s Lair
Windows 3 is often said to be just an UI on top of DOS. This article presents some of the inner side of Windows 3.x and will show that it is more ambitious and advanced than that.| XtoF’s Lair
When developing a homebrew for an old computer or console, it is important to regularly test it on the real machine. Why? Because emulators are often not 100% accurate and you can miss important bugs.| XtoF’s Lair
Techniques for timing on the IBM PC family under MS-DOS, and many related subjects. Sample functions and programs are included. This article is a repost of a piece by Kris Heidenstrom from the mid-90s.| XtoF’s Lair
A presentation of the 3D short movies I produced on PC more than twenty years ago, using 3D Studio on MS-DOS then 3DS Max on Windows NT. What was it like to model and raytrace during those early days? The videos can be watched in all their glory from the 90s.| XtoF’s Lair