The latest Matrix movie has completely polarized the audience (to an extreme "blue pill/red pill", I would venture to say), but that doesn't mean we should abandon this particular universe. In fact, there is always something new to experience, and that idea brings us to the channel of Oli Wright, who decided to reproduce the famous "Matrix effect" or the "rain of characters" on an IBM 5151 monitor with green phosphor of high persistence... and it looks great.
The IBM 5150 needs no introduction. After all, it is the computer that gave rise to the term "PC" and started a true computer revolution. However, not everyone knows that the IBM 5150 was accompanied by the IBM 5151 monitor, a 12-inch (11.5 effective) monster compatible with the MDA (Monochrome Display Adapter) standard.
One of the most remembered aspects of the IBM 5151 is its bright green phosphor, which allows it to display text in very high definition, but that's not all. The phosphor of the 5151 has high persistence, a property that reduces the classic flicker effects on CRT monitors, but causes a kind of sweep when the image changes or text moves for some reason (say, a "dir" command in DOS). And it's that sweep that brings us back to the Matrix...
An IBM PC with the Matrix Effect
What you just watched is a demo prepared by Oli Wright on his small retro channel "Oli's Random Retro Shed". The first thing he did was reproduce the Matrix effect in 8088 assembly to create the sequence of characters falling down the screen, and test its operation on the excellent PCjs emulator. Obviously, being an emulated environment, all we see is the movement of the characters without any kind of effect, but that changes once he moves to the real hardware and the monitor kicks in.
The final result is almost perfect, and the binary of the Matrix effect takes up less than 256 bytes, ideal for a machine like the IBM 5150 with limited RAM and graphics capabilities. At the same time, I think it would work as an adequate screensaver to avoid burn-in, courtesy of the random profile of the characters. Want to do something similar on your modern computer? Don't forget you can download screensavers inspired by Matrix and other projects by clicking here.
Access the channel: Click here
Source: Hackaday
