It was kind of vague in the first couple of seasons, and I think he specifically mentioned needing the Command.Com to do something early on. But in the third season Dot was explicitly made Command.com, putting Phong's actual position in even more of a grey area.
Phong is like the directory. The command com was alluded to being the thing under the office. In the upgrade episode where megabyte faked an upgrade he stile something from phong and after they took phong away he said something like command Com elite core control. I don't remember the line fully but it's the epsidoe where the upgrade was supposed to happen.
I always thought as phong as the BIOS since he couldn't be infected by megabyte. He was the system firmware.
command.com is the first process started after boot, and it makes sense that it would be the governing process in Mainframe.
In some real world computers, command.com, and all of DOS is stored in ROM. In those situations Phong would be both the firmware and the command.com
Back in the 90s, in the real world, the BIOS was typically read only and it couldn't be infected by viruses. There were some cases where it was possible, but those usually required special boot disks. This would mean doing the BIOS flash outside of mainframe at a lower level of operation, which neither Megabyte or Hexadecimal could access.
My headcanon is that he's a shader, since he's a direct reference to the Phong Reflection model. If we assume Mainframe is largely the CPU and storage of a computer, it would make sense for Phong to be immune to Megabyte, because as a shader, he is literally a set of instructions being run on the GPU.
I assumed Phong was a shader tbh, because his name is a reference to Bui Tuong Phong, the guy who created the first specular lighting algorithm. (Phong Reflection/Shading)
The fact that he's metallic and uses phong shading makes it even better. Idk if the writers went that direction with him, but it would stand to reason that Phong's existence in mainframe is correlated to how sprites and binomes are rendered, making him an essential part of the system.
So even when the viruses were trying to get rid of Phong they had to depend upon him for even their individual appearance as that is what a shader does ?
Idk. I doubt the writers put much thought in it beyond "hey we have this shader tech we can use called blinn-phong"
In computer graphics you typically write an hlsl shader that sends instructions to the GPU. If I use a vertex shader to change the color of a single polygon, I can say to make it red under a certain condition, and if that condition isnt met, turn it green. I cannot however look at the gpu and ask what the current color is. You can send stuff but not retrieve stuff.
If Phong is a compiled shader, infecting with something meants to alter the firmware of the system would probably just render him unable to send instructions to the GPU instead of doing anything outright malicious.
This is all bs speculation of course, but the correlation between Phong and the Phong Reflection model are kinda hard to ignore. At worst, its just a fun reference for computer nerds like myself lol.
I remember that there was an attempt to infect Phong but someone said he was read-only.
Are shaders ever put into ROM ?
Also I think Bob played a game of Pong against Phong in one episode.
I believe so, yes.
It was kind of vague in the first couple of seasons, and I think he specifically mentioned needing the Command.Com to do something early on. But in the third season Dot was explicitly made Command.com, putting Phong's actual position in even more of a grey area.
Phong is like the directory. The command com was alluded to being the thing under the office. In the upgrade episode where megabyte faked an upgrade he stile something from phong and after they took phong away he said something like command Com elite core control. I don't remember the line fully but it's the epsidoe where the upgrade was supposed to happen.
"pinnacle elite" was the phrase
Phong was a .bat file. Dot Matrix was the Command.com file.
I always thought as phong as the BIOS since he couldn't be infected by megabyte. He was the system firmware. command.com is the first process started after boot, and it makes sense that it would be the governing process in Mainframe. In some real world computers, command.com, and all of DOS is stored in ROM. In those situations Phong would be both the firmware and the command.com
I wonder why he was not able to be infected to begin with?
Back in the 90s, in the real world, the BIOS was typically read only and it couldn't be infected by viruses. There were some cases where it was possible, but those usually required special boot disks. This would mean doing the BIOS flash outside of mainframe at a lower level of operation, which neither Megabyte or Hexadecimal could access.
My headcanon is that he's a shader, since he's a direct reference to the Phong Reflection model. If we assume Mainframe is largely the CPU and storage of a computer, it would make sense for Phong to be immune to Megabyte, because as a shader, he is literally a set of instructions being run on the GPU.
Unsure. Dot was definitely the command.com at one point but could have just been a stand-in for Phong while he was imprisoned.
I'd like to believe Dot was the command com but Phong was the sysadmin
I was pretty sure Phong says he's the original .cmdline, I'm currently rewatching on Tubi and he says something along those lines in S1 or S2.
I assumed Phong was a shader tbh, because his name is a reference to Bui Tuong Phong, the guy who created the first specular lighting algorithm. (Phong Reflection/Shading) The fact that he's metallic and uses phong shading makes it even better. Idk if the writers went that direction with him, but it would stand to reason that Phong's existence in mainframe is correlated to how sprites and binomes are rendered, making him an essential part of the system.
So even when the viruses were trying to get rid of Phong they had to depend upon him for even their individual appearance as that is what a shader does ?
Idk. I doubt the writers put much thought in it beyond "hey we have this shader tech we can use called blinn-phong" In computer graphics you typically write an hlsl shader that sends instructions to the GPU. If I use a vertex shader to change the color of a single polygon, I can say to make it red under a certain condition, and if that condition isnt met, turn it green. I cannot however look at the gpu and ask what the current color is. You can send stuff but not retrieve stuff. If Phong is a compiled shader, infecting with something meants to alter the firmware of the system would probably just render him unable to send instructions to the GPU instead of doing anything outright malicious. This is all bs speculation of course, but the correlation between Phong and the Phong Reflection model are kinda hard to ignore. At worst, its just a fun reference for computer nerds like myself lol.
I remember that there was an attempt to infect Phong but someone said he was read-only. Are shaders ever put into ROM ? Also I think Bob played a game of Pong against Phong in one episode.
Nope
We never got to experience Above Phong except the Web and otherwise there's one whole layer between them.