Standalone demos whose binaries are restricted to 512 bytes (i.e., x86 boot sector programs).
As a 14-year-old, I thought computing glory was in writing the next Windows, leading me to C and x86 assembly. The forum I frequented, OSDev.org, ran some informal 512-byte challenges. It was a big deal to teenage me:
- Snake512 (snake.asm) was 3rd place in the 2nd contest
- MusicDemo (music.asm) was 2nd place in the 3rd contest
I now upload these for nerd cred, potential improvement, and a reminder of what is possible. This README is larger than both binaries combined.
snake.asm running in an emulator. 512 bytes of gaming fun!
First, install the NASM (the Netwide Assembler), e.g.,
apt-get install nasm
then run:
nasm -O3 -f bin snake.asm -o snake.bin
nasm -O3 -f bin music.asm -o music.bin
For the philistines without floppy drives, one can run the binaries on the excellent QEMU emulator. Install:
apt-get install qemu
then run
qemu -M pc -soundhw pcspk -fda [binary] -boot a
where [binary] is snake.bin or music.bin.
Based on opcodes, these should run fine on a 486 with VGA and a PC speaker. Having never owned such a machine, I can't guarantee that these are the minimum system requirements.
To write one of these to a floppy disk, assuming your drive is at /dev/fd0:
dd if=[binary] of=/dev/fd0 bs=512
Boot your computer from the floppy and enjoy.