I've never seen this demo. Good work on sharing this piece of history!

Never seen that before, neat stuff. Thanks for sharing it!

thanks for sharing this!
it is very nice 😁
even works with w10/x64

Hope this long infodump post isn't too much. It's been an adventure finding this thing again.

It took me a loooong time to find a copy of the files and as I said I finally emailed Michael Henry who worked on the audio / music for the software asking him about it and he emailed me a copy of the program. His site is https://isorhythm.com/ - my correspondence with him was polite but he kept calling Windows "Windoze" 😑

I had emailed Steve Boyer who also worked on this and he politely declined me.

From his site - http://www.steveboyerdesign.com/mtv.php

Originally designed for MTV as a prototype mechanism for creating music games this unique musical toy was purchased by Intel to showcase their MMX technology and was showcased at the New York Experimental Music Festival. Innovative on many fronts, it was one of the earliest 3D musical interfaces and it incorporated a system for constructing musical passages in real time by stitching together pre-recorded beats, phrases, grooves and loops before these processes became common practice. It also incorporated a method for providing realtime musical feedback and a transition masking technique we referred to at the time as 'musical duct tape'.

Press F1 once you've downloaded the groove machine and you'll see the help/about box and it lists both of these people. Alternatively here's the about box uploaded to Imgur https://i.imgur.com/tMHfdOh.png

I originally found out who had worked on it via this ebook.

https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Comp … tsec=frontcover

This is the prototype from which the Intel Groove Machine was made

MTV Groove Engine prototype
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybl1gfbjt0I

Great work tracking this down and sharing it along with the story! From the video I didn't realise it was interactive. Runs fine in Win11, and I just spent too long trying to land hits on those orbs.

This really should go up on archive.org.

I'm not sure I've filed it correctly but I just got through posting it to archive.org. I used the file modification date as the publication date because I have no idea what else to use. If there are any errors in the way I've posted it there please tell me and I will fix. Thanks.

https://archive.org/details/groove_202205

Very nice demo involving the MMX instructions. Thanks for sharing this and the story behind it!

powerpeecee wrote on 2022-05-26, 12:28:

I'm not sure I've filed it correctly but I just got through posting it to archive.org. I used the file modification date as the publication date because I have no idea what else to use. If there are any errors in the way I've posted it there please tell me and I will fix. Thanks.

https://archive.org/details/groove_202205

Looks perfect. Nice one 😀

Never heard of this demo. But it's cool to see this demo working on AMD CPUs, something which wouldn't have been possible back then. The archive org description can be changed to announce support on Windows 11 as well.

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2022-05-30, 12:57:

But it's cool to see this demo working on AMD CPUs, something which wouldn't have been possible back then.

There is a "GenuineIntel" vendor ID check in the executable which can be easily hexedited to "AuthenticAMD" or any other CPU vendor ID. It worked well on a AMD K6-2+/450 CPU after doing this.

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2022-05-30, 12:57:

Never heard of this demo. But it's cool to see this demo working on AMD CPUs, something which wouldn't have been possible back then. The archive org description can be changed to announce support on Windows 11 as well.

I edited to say I hadn't tested it myself but I was told it works. Thanks!

Hex editing the .exe to get to run on an AMD CPU is brilliant Gmlb256, When did AMD CPU's get MMX support? Now you've got me looking and I can't seem to find a definitive date or CPU model.

The first AMD CPU that got MMX support was the original K6 CPU, released in 1997.

Gmlb256 wrote on 2022-05-30, 13:59:

The first AMD CPU that got MMX support was the original K6 CPU, released in 1997.

My technique was although different, I used DxWnd Fake CPU option to make the program look at the CPU as GenuineIntel instead. Your method should work as well.

powerpeecee wrote on 2022-05-30, 13:41:

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2022-05-30, 12:57:

Never heard of this demo. But it's cool to see this demo working on AMD CPUs, something which wouldn't have been possible back then. The archive org description can be changed to announce support on Windows 11 as well.

I edited to say I hadn't tested it myself but I was told it works. Thanks!

Hex editing the .exe to get to run on an AMD CPU is brilliant Gmlb256, When did AMD CPU's get MMX support? Now you've got me looking and I can't seem to find a definitive date or CPU model.

Intel introduced MMX and extended it through SSE to the current SSE(3?). AMD developed 3DNow! to compete with MMX too but they failed and new AMD CPUs don't have it as wellm

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2022-05-30, 14:07:

Intel introduced MMX and extended it through SSE to the current SSE(3?). AMD developed 3DNow! to compete with MMX too but they failed and new AMD CPUs don't have it as wellm

Both MMX and 3DNow! registers were aliased with the FPU registers because back then it helped to avoid issues with context switching used in multitasking OSes.

SSE uses new registers that doesn't mess with the FPU ones and would require OS support for proper context switching (technically SSE instructions can be run on a unsupported OS but the registers would be corrupted if two programs are using SSE instructions at the same time).

Gmlb256 wrote on 2022-05-30, 14:30:

SSE uses new registers that doesn't mess with the FPU ones and would require OS support for proper context switching (technically SSE instructions can be run on a unsupported OS but the registers would be corrupted if two programs are using SSE instructions at the same time).

Also SSE2 makes FPU mostly deprecated, because all float (32-bit) and double (64-bit) operations can be done with SSE + SSE2 instead of FPU. Modern applications (especially x64 ones) don't use FPU anymore.
The rarely used 80-bit extended float remains supported by the FPU only.

I would love to test it. But my machine is a full AMD rig so.......

Oh cool. I gotta try and run this.

Speedwarrior956 wrote on 2022-07-22, 11:12:

I would love to test it. But my machine is a full AMD rig so.......

You can still run on AMD