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Streaming RealAudio From a Commodore 64

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the you'll-be-stone-dead-in-a-moment dept.

An anonymous reader submits: "This just came in on comp.sys.cbm and I think it will be of general interest here at Slashdot as well. Two Commodore hackers, Adam Dunkels and Peter Eliasson, have built an Ethernet card for their C64 and have connected one to the Internet. But they aren't 'just' running a TCP/IP stack and a web server on it - they are also running a RealAudio server which streams audio from the C64's cassette player and apparently, it sounds awful! They have the full source code avaliable and pictures of the C64 server."

5 of 332 comments (clear)

  1. Still up! by autopr0n · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Holy shit! This thing is still standing! I was able to get through with just two tries (the first time I just got the frameset). According to the docs they had put in quite a few optimizations to their TCP/IP stack to allow for a lot of connections (they said they encoded the state data in TCP sequence field, allowing them to have unlimited connections, or something like that)

    The thing is, they haven't got the optimization on port 6510, so if you try to go to the 'tcp status page' you'll overload it.

    Building a C64 web server is impressive. Building one that can stand up to the Slashdot effect is, well, wow :P

    --
    autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
  2. Re:Powerful peripherals by petis · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I believe that in some (or most?) of the better demos produced on the C64, the coders used the floppy-drive processor to help calculate the vectors. I never coded for the C64, so I don't know for sure though.

    Anyway, the demo coders from the C64-scene are definitely impressing. Talk about using the resources you have to a maximum.

  3. c64/tcp by devonbowen · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Ah, memories. Back when C64's were actually modern, I attached a hardware UART to the bus and used it to drive a ham radio packet modem (at a whopping 1200 baud). I wrote enough of the IP layer in hand coded 6502 assembly language to get ping and basic routing working. Then I pinged our BSD 4.3 Tahoe machine at the university five miles away. This was in the mid-80s or so. Unfortunately, I never had time to continue up the TCP/IP stack. Glad to see these guys pushing the limits of that little box.

    Devon

  4. Access statistics update by adadun · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It has now been four and a half hours since this appeared on the front page, and our C64 server is still up and running.

    I was just able to reach the access statistics page. There has been a total of 32000 accesses (of which 8000 came before the Slashdot attack). 25% of the accesses have been for the /index.html page and only 1% have been for the RealPlayer description file /c64.ram.

    24000 hits in 4.5 hours, thats nearly 1.5 hits per second.

  5. "Because You Can" Category by Tony.Tang · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is a cool project. /. should add a new category called, "Because You Can." You see, there are a lot of wicked projects that we cover here, but they're not so much funny as, "This is totally sweet." (e.g. linux on ____, webserver on _____, and now of course, real-audio streaming on _____).

    Invariably when we cover these, you get a few responses like this: "Why would you ever want to do this... blah blah."

    Invariably, the response is: "Because you can."

    The next step, of course, after creating such a category, is to make sure it's mirrored well before it's posted. (*wistful look*)

    Now, I haven't checked whether this story is a hoax or not, but if it is, then it should be in the "Funny" category. Otherwise, consider this post as a call for a new category called, "Because you can!"