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by joquarky 32 days ago
> Just like how DOOM used to require a luxury scale $5,000 home PC to run and now the same level of compute can be found on disposable vape pens

Do you have anything resembling a source on that claim?

2 comments

He's roughly wrong if you're pedantic, a pc with 4mb of ram in 1993 cost about $1125 (bottom of the premium market as only premium pc's had 4mb of ram) which has about the same value as $2600 usd today. Really though considering the development speed at the time (going back even a year and you'd pay a higher price for similar specs) and that someone buying a "premium pc" when doom was realeased could easily spend twice as much without being able to blow away dooms requirements I wouldn't argue the point they made.

Plenty of stories about doom on a vape pen. Here's one:

https://www.thegamer.com/doom-running-vape-usb-connection-pc...

Other notables include doom on a pregnancy test, and doom on a sbc powered by a potato battery.

Some actual pc prices in 1993 if that's what your after, look at premium pcs for 4mb ones https://dosdays.co.uk/topics/1993.php

Look up DOOM Esp32 for numerous examples of doom running on a $2 microcontroller.

Also see this article on the types of arm cortex chips actually found in a disposable vape pen: https://blog.jgc.org/2026/01/theres-ridiculous-amount-of-tec...

If someone hasn't gotten native doom to run in a vape, I think I have my next weekend project.