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There are three main kinds or types of demos: "4k intros", "64k intros" and "demos", which only differ in terms of size limit. (The 64k size-limit was originally introduced because of the MS-DOS real mode's 64k memory segment limitation and has been kept as a tradition ever since, even though the limitation itself doesn't exist anymore under Windows.) Demos have no specific size limit, whereas intros do. Hence, intros also show off the programmer's ability to squeeze much into little space, often by generating graphic and sound data rather than just reading it from a datafile. Because of the extremely low size limit, 4k intros used to have no sound or nothing which could be considered as a significantly good sounding music, but as technology progressed, 4k sound synthesis has become a new frontier in the demoscene. However, 4k still isn't the lowest border for demosceners: some demoparties organize 1k, 256 byte or even 64 byte intro competitions. While creating a 4k might not require low-level programming knowledge anymore, sub-1k competitions require the demo coder to be skilled in both assembly programming and algorythmic optimization. (For comparison: The size of this paragraph of text is over 1 kilobyte.)
Restrictions change from one [[compo|competition]] to another, depending on the machine on which the programs are run. The demos are now most commonly designed to run on [[Personal Computer|PC]], but not that long ago were mostly designed to run on [[ZX Spectrum]], [[Commodore 64]], [[Atari ST]] and [[Commodore Amiga]] [[home computer]]s. There are even demos running on such diverse platforms as [[Commodore VIC-20|VIC-20]], [[Amstrad CPC]], [[TO7]], [[BeBox]], [[RiscPC|RISC PC]], [[Apple Macintosh|Macintosh]], [[Game Boy]], [[GP32]] and SONY [[PlayStation]].
Notable [[List of demoscene groups|demo groups]] in the past included the [[Future Crew]], [[Renaissance (demo group)|Renaissance]], the [[Silents]], [[Cascada (demo group)|Cascada]], [[Witan (demo group)|Witan]], [[Triton (demo group)|Triton]], or in the present days, [[Farbrausch]], [[mfx]] or [[Kewlers]].
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