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Comment by glimshe | Hacker News Reader

I got a math coprocessor relatively early for my 386SX20 - I wanted to use 3D Studio, the killer app for math processors back in the day! The vast majority of games simply used integer math and didn't require, or could take an advantage from a coprocessor, but I have no idea what was going on in the article. In the early 90s, the only games I can remember that could optionally leverage a coprocessor were the Falcon 3.0 family of simulators.

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For me the killer app was POVRAY. Ran so much faster with a 387 (I seem to recall something like 100x faster but it was a long long time ago).

You lucky. I always dreamt of one, that and a TARGA graphics card. The last one not only for the looks but speed as well. Converting a *.TGA to a indexed color took a considerable amount of time.

I remember being tired all day long after waking up many time during the night to check the progress of my renders or to tweak it and restart. And then I got a math coprocessor so I could wake up more often in the night to check my renders.

I too slept badly because of povray rendering. But I just had trouble sleeping with the fan noise.

I would just set them before bed and then check them before going to school in the morning, and set another one running, of course :D

20+ floppy disks to get 3D Studio and of course you always had a bad one and not the first.

Reminds me of Monkey Island 2 asking to insert floppy 3bis. Good times :)

I can still imagine the floppy drive making the "chug-chug-chug" sound when you knew that the disk was bad.

I remember "Dune 2" (1992) could use a co-processor? Not sure, we never had a machine with a co-processor but a friend had and he said that at start-up the game said something like "Co-processor found - let's use it!" and then game could run faster I believe (not sure).

Edit- Dune 2, not Dune 2000

i remember a friend of mine had falcon for the amiga 500. i don't think he EVER managed to take off without some "cheat" being activated.

a rather difficult game.

f16 however was a joy. happy days

Ah, I also had a 386SX, and some games (not a lot, maybe three or four) never run properly on my machine. :(

Edit: I just remembered one of them was "Eye of the Beholder III"

> Edit: I just remembered one of them was "Eye of the Beholder III"

If it's any consolation, you didn't miss much - III was a wet rag compared to the majesty of the first two games!

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