Doom's Unlikely Home: Vapes and Calculators Join the Fray
Who would have thought that the iconic Doom, a digital juggernaut that defined early first-person shooters, would find its way onto such… unconventional platforms? While the idea of running a server on a vape might have sounded like a distant, humorous speculation just recently, the reality has arrived with surprising swiftness. However, as is often the case with technological marvels, there's a fascinating caveat.
The Vape as a Display: A Technical Feat, Not a Full Port
The vape in question, an Aspire PIXO, while a relatively sophisticated and pricey device at €30, isn't exactly running Doom natively. Its internal hardware, boasting a Puxa PY32F403XC ARM chip with a modest 64KB of RAM and 256KB of flash memory, supplemented by 16MB of external SPI memory, is hardly a powerhouse. The inclusion of Bluetooth, a 323x173 LCD screen, a heating coil, vibration motor, and even a microphone paint a picture of a device designed for vaping, not gaming. Yet, through custom firmware, this vape can share its screen via USB. This ingenious workaround allows it to stream Doom, or even video, directly to its built-in display, effectively turning it into a remote monitor. This capability, coupled with a browser-based tool called VapeCloudStreamer developed by the modder, orchestrates the screen access, transforming a vaping device into a peculiar gaming peripheral.
Calculators: A Long-Standing Canvas for Gaming Dreams
The idea of running Doom on a calculator isn't entirely novel; Casio scientific calculators have a well-established history of being modified for gaming. This isn't just a one-off occurrence but rather a persistent hobbyist endeavor. Enthusiasts have successfully ported Doom, created Minecraft mods, and even developed NES emulators for these seemingly humble devices. This long-standing tradition of calculator modding underscores a persistent human desire to push the boundaries of everyday technology and inject it with unexpected functionality.
Doom's Ever-Expanding (and Bizarre) Gaming Pantheon
Doom's legacy is punctuated by its remarkable ability to be squeezed onto an astonishing array of hardware. From relatively capable chargers to more outlandish applications like a masturbator, a pregnancy test, and an alarm clock, the game has demonstrated an almost universal compatibility. In a testament to its enduring nature, a Doom instance famously ran on an ASUS MyPal PDA for an impressive 2.5 years continuously. Perhaps one of the most outlandish examples involves its successful execution within gut bacteria. Even more remarkably, Doom has been run on a graphics card alone, detached from a complete system, and has even been given a neural network-powered engine that generates its gameplay in real-time. As technology advances and more devices incorporate sophisticated chips and advanced electronics, it’s becoming increasingly challenging to predict where Doom will surface next.
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