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Tulip to Relaunch C64
Ola "4pLaY" Jensen writes "The Dutch PC manufacturer Tulip who bought the Commodore brand name has decided to finally do something with it and re-launch the C64 in some form. Exactly what it will be is still a puzzle in my mind but from reading their news it seems to be a PC with some OS flavour with a C64 Emulator." I spent many hours on a C64 when I was in elementary school, and this brings back a lot of memories.
You could probably fit that c64 computeing power in a watch AND provide an LCD screen capable of rendering the stunning CGA style graphics all at a reasonable price and footprint... It would actually be a lot of fun to hack around with... I might see if I can do it myself if they don't. :)
Programming on the C64 as a kid taught me the basics of computers, and initiated a long interest in computers that carried me to an high-end education in the field, and the beginning of what promised to be an interesting career.
Now, my computer career is in ruins, there's no new jobs available, existing computer jobs are easily being sent to other countries, and the modern market for Computer Scientists is increasingly resembling the modern market for tulips in the Netherlands. Looking back, I realize young kids get hyped into "computers are cool" too easy, because they pick up on shit like the similarly over-hyped "Star Wars" movies.
I blame my old Commodore 64. I hope the original developers led horrible lives, and this new project fails miserably.
The custom synth chip made for the C64 is in short supply, in fact from what I understand there arent any bulk ones left. It's the basis of some pretty neat modern synth projects including the SidStation, and the amazing DIY project The MIDIbox Sid. You might wanna check out this interview with Bob Yannes the designer of the SID chip.
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
You can run
E32Frodo in SymbianOS phones, e.g. in the Nokia 3650.
"Currently there are about 300 commercial websites that use the name Commodore or Commodore 64 without having a license from Tulip. Tulip will not allow unauthorised use of the Commodore brand."
So the thanks to all the people who have kept the name alive, archived all the old software and created amazing new programs and hardware is a kick in the face in the form of a cease-and-desist? Forget about VICE or CCS64, now you must use (and pay for) the "official emulator".
Is this really the only way Tulip could reclaim the money spent buying the Commodore brand?
In my playground, Spectrum owners ranked lower than BBC Micro (Model B) owners. The BBC owners were only just below C64 owners, and mainly because the C64 had some US-import games (the british games were much of a muchness.)
The BBC's higher-res was far more valued than the spectrum's higher color count, especially since many people still had B/W TVs (!), and the fact you had the same home computer as your school's computer made life easier.
Sure, the spectrum had colored blobs, but you could actually make out what the characters were supposed to be on the BBC and C64
The BBC owners could and did download games from their TV (BBC TV), and they actually had keyboards and the only non-sucky 8-bit BASIC. Plus, the sheet-metal BBC case was way cooler than the flimsy C64 and Speccy.
We all laughed at the poor sod who bought a VIC-20 a year AFTER the C64 came out. It was an early lesson in don't-beleive-a-salesman for him and his parent...
I'm sure someone will manage to get it running some flavour of Linux. In the mean time, I'll be happy to run Contiki on my real C64 - unless someone can come up with a linux-distro for it that is.
If this 'new C64' turns out to be naught more than a reasonable standard PC bundled with an emulator and some repackaged software, porting Linux to it should be as hard as placing the Knoppix CD in the drive and booting it up...
Personaly, I would think it would be great if they brought back to life some of the old hardware - the VIC was an interesting grapichscontroller with it's independent sprites, and the SID could make music like no chip has before or after.
If you're a youngster and wish to learn more about one of the most influential micros in the early 80's, you may want to look at Marko Mäkelä 8-bit server. His document page is a treasure in it's own right.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
Wow.
You mean you can load arbitrary software in the 100k-byte range on your cellphone in europe/america and use/play the software you just loaded?
How do you transfer it to the phone? IRDA or cable of some kind?
Being in japan really sucks, the cellphone revolution is passing everyone by in here.
Latest phones boast "20kbyte java deluxe" applis that cannot access hardware, screen, or anything on the phone directly, and run slow as molasses.
That, and there is no method to load the stuff into the phone other than downloading them at 9600bps from a website, no possibility of remote debugging, and if the applet crashes, you have no way to find out what went wrong etc (the phone will simply display a error box and terminate the applet).
Pretty amazing that nokia/etc phones are so much further along when it comes to writing your own software for them.
There was an adapter that plugged in the tape drive connector, and the cable was plugged in CD player audio out.
Ohhhhh I remember those.
We hooked up a regular tape player to a small low-powered FM transmitter, and in two other rooms hooked up a radio reciever to the C64's using that CD adapter. Playing a C64 tape ('Ghouls' if I remember correctly, anyone remember that?) we where able to load the game on both machines at the same time from one tape. Amazingly, it worked. Most of the time. Sometimes one would load but the other would just stop mid-way.
Ahhh, those where the days!
Come to think of it, that could have been one of the first wireless networks! If only it had been two-way!
>The company has been on the brink of bankrupcy a number of times.
Probably again...
They show all the characteristics: digging through their old stack of patents and finding violations, and now looking in the pile of "brand names" they own and trying to cash-in on those.
From the entire article it is apparent that they expect nothing less than a steady stream of royalty money coming in all by itself by just declaring "commodore is our brand name", fighting all people who setup sites of their own, and bringing out some software emulator for the PC that they blindly assume 6 million people will buy from them.
I think it will be a great disappointment.
More info here
Goblin
It's all fun and games until a 200' robot dinosaur shows up and trashes Neo-Tokyo... Again
IIRC, Fastload sent the data using a handshaked (clocked) protocol.
.sig
Turboload used the standard (asynchronous) protocol built in,
it just turned off the screen which prevented the 40 cycle drop out that occured when the C64 fetches a new character row.
(It should have turn off sprites since they steal cycles too, but nobody's perfect.)
Vorpal on the other hand blanked the screen, turned off sprites, used both data lines to transmit in an asynchronous manor,
and recorded the data in a different format, yielding a 25 to 1 speed improvement.
(About 1/2 the speed of the IBM PC's 5.25" single denisty floppy)
Timing was so precise that it had to account for the different clock speeds of
the pal (.985 Mhertz) and the NTSC (1.0227 Mhertz) and 1541 (1.000 Mhertz) when transmitting the data.
To appreciate how stupid all this really is,
you have to realize that the C64 has a custom chip that implements their serial protocol,
and the clock and data lines weren't attached to anything.
With a tiny amount of software, and two extra traces on the motherboard,
the 1541 could have been 12 times faster than it was.
-- this is not a