It was 1995, 15-inch 800×600 monitors were the norm, what kind of monitor did John Carmack use to code Quake?
Choose your answer and the correct choice will be revealed.
When developing Quake at id Software in the mid-1990s, John Carmack used an Intergraph InterView 28hd96 color CRT monitor. This cutting-edge display measured 28 inches (25.9 inches viewable) and offered an impressive resolution of 1920 x 1080. The monitor itself was substantial in size, measuring 19.5 x 27.5 x 24.4 inches (49.5 x 69.9 x 62.0 cm) and weighing 99.5 pounds (45 kg), and had a typical power consumption of 180 watts.
In 2014, Carmack reflected about the monitor and his setup in a tweet, noting that even his state-of-the-art Intergraph workstation couldn’t run Quake at 1080p. For further perspective, he mentioned that an SGI Infinite Reality graphics system – a highly advanced and incredibly expensive machine designed for 3D rendering and simulation – was only capable of achieving a resolution of 1280 x 1024 pixels, far less than today’s smartphones.
To put things in further context, we browsed through computer magazine archives dating back to 1995 (PC Magazine and Byte) which revealed the stark contrast between typical consumer hardware and Carmack’s setup.
At the time, PC manufacturers like Compaq, IBM, Micron among others advertised their latest consumer offerings with a full list of specs on every model, boasting specifications that included Pentium 133MHz processors, 4x EIDE CD-ROM drives, Sound Blaster 16 audio cards, PCI 64-bit graphics accelerators (with a mere 2MB of VRAM), and 64 to 128MB of EDO RAM. High-performance SCSI hard drives were another premium option (this was quite the luxury right there).
The ads showed monitor options of a 17-inch 1280×960 .28mm monitor or a 21-inch 1600×1200 model. The more expensive PC bundle would set you back $11,499, so you can imagine the kind of luxury Carmack was having with the Intergraph.
