Duration: 5:04

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REAL HARDWARE CAPTURE. Here is a demonstration of how the game Asylum (by Andy Southgate) runs on an ARM3 processor with cache both enabled (rabbit icon) and disabled (turtle icon). Disabling the cache makes the ARM3 run roughly at the same speed as an ARM2 8Mhz CPU, but not exactly the same. Still, it runs well enough that ARM2 optimized demos and games with smooth scrolling in them still run smoothly.

ABOUT 'ASYLUM':
It's a pretty fun little platforming/side-scrolling shooter game where your goal is to find the exit of each maze-like stage. The plot is as odd as the opening scrolling text title screen says. You can have a lot of fun going for the myriad of pickups and collectible items scattered all over the stages, with huge potential to rack up big scores.

The footage has been captured from the analog RGB output of the Archimedes, digitized and scaled using the OSSC (Open Source Scan Converter) and captured using a Datapath VisionRGB-E1s PCI-Express capture card. The capture was then resized (upscaled) further to 2700x2160 pixels in VirtualDub2. Final compression was performed using HandBrake.

Specifications on the Acorn Archimedes computer:
- original Archimedes 440/1 motherboard (manufactured around mid-1989)
- ARM3 35Mhz processor (manufactured week 51 1989) on an upgrade board
- 4MBs of RAM
- The sound output has not been modified to remove the low-pass filter

0:00 - Cache Enabled
2:45 - Cache Disabled ("ARM2 Mode")

#acornarchimedes #riscos #arm3 #ossc #visionrgb