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Finally: Broadband for the Commodore 64
GP writes "Now even die-hard Commodore 64 users are able to enjoy the benefits of broadband Internet connectivity. A newly announced Ethernet card together with the Contiki operating system lets you surf the web, send e-mail, host web sites with the built-in web server, and soon even play LAN games on your good old Commodore 64! All this with a computer that is old enough to drink."
It means the Commadore was released more then 21 years ago, which is that age at which its legal to drink alcohol in the US. I believe the original release was in 1982.
Then you haven't configured the thing properly. I used a 386DX-20 as a firewall for a cable modem for a couple of years and it had no problem with >1024kbps.
Well, in some countries there is a minimum age to purchase alcohol. In the US, its 21. According to: http://oldcomputers.net/c64.html the commodore was released Jan, 1982. Making it 21 years old, or, old enough to drink.
(Anonymous non-karma w***e posting.)
13.09.2003: Retro Replay and RR-Net available
In time with the announced date, the new production run of the Retro Replay is finished. Compared to the old cartridges, only cosmetic changes have been made: The most significant change is the colour: Blue instead of black. After many requests by users, the jumpers are now mounted straight, not to the side. To ensure proper mounting in our new cases, the mounting hole has been moved and changed in diameter to perfectly fit the transparent cases.
At the same time, the networking card RR-Net is going on sale. The card is plugged to the expansion port of the Retro Replay, and allows connecting the C64 to an intranet. Although the operating system Contiki is freeware, we have an agreement with the author Adam Dunkels: He gets paid for every RR-Net unit that's sold. Contiki is an operating system that offers many features in very small space: A TCP/IP stack, a web browser, a webserver, a VNC-client and of course a graphical user interface. It is included on a 5,25 inch disk for the C64. To make use of all features of Contiki, an intranet with router should be available.
As an introductory offer, there's a network-bundle. It contains:
# Retro Replay
# RR-Net with Contiki
# transparent case
# worldwide shipment
together for only 100,- EUR!
Please use the contact form for your order. Unfortunately, our domain ami.ga does not work at the moment, because the republic of Gabon is currently migrating their internet connection from satellite to undersea cable. Even with our server in Germany, both the website and email addresses are affected, but the contact form works reliably!
I think that question depends on whether the C64 had DMA or not. If yes, then it would have a chance in hell of doing burst transmissions that could flood a 10BaseT line. If no, then why the **** are people wasting time on this?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I think that question depends on whether the C64 had DMA or not.
.. wheeeee) would blank the screen to make sure nothing interrupted the CPU and upset the timing.
Kinda. All the chips (video, sound, etc.) had direct access to the memory. But they all have to take turns, when the video chip was reading from memory, the CPU couldn't and would pause. Some of the turbo-loaders (heh, load 64k in 15 seconds from floppy
Point of order, Mr. Chairman...
Modems measure speed in Kilobits, computer RAM is measured in KiloBytes, so a computer with 64K of RAM contains ~64,000 Bytes or 512,000 bits.
A 56K modem downloads (at a theoretical maximum) 56,000 bits per second.
Simple math reveals that with 512,000 bits of RAM, at 56,000 bps it will take 9.1 seconds to fill it's RAM capacity.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
No. It can't.
Not much, I would think.
The C64 has a 1MHz 6510 8-bit CPU. The memory bus is also 1MHz. Moreover, the fastest instruction on the 6510 (which is a 6502 derivative) is two clocks. Thus, at four clocks per byte (two to read, two to write), the fastest data transfer rate you could conceivably get is 0.25 MBytes/second (in reality, it would be rather slower as the LDA and STA instructions take more than two clocks, but I don't have the timing chart in front of me).
The C64 does have DMA, but it's dedicated to video access and refresh and can't be redirected. Moreover, these DMA cycles completely take over the bus for 40 clocks every eight video lines. So your packet writes will likely hiccup from time to time. (Presumably they have big silos on the NIC.)
Even if the NIC did DMA itself, it would have to get out of video's way every eight lines, which means you couldn't flood the line indefinitely. Also, the C-64 has a mere -- surprise! -- 64K of RAM. At 1MByte/sec, you'd run out of RAM in 0.065536 seconds.
Schwab
C-64 Early Adopter
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
I tend to disagree. If a 486 can't push that many K/s, it's not the processor's fault, but the OS (and the program you try to push with).
On my mac G4 450 Mhz (hardly a rocket), Camino browser easily d/l's @ 200 K/s, while MS Explorer can't go higher than 50 K/s, and then goes down in speed. It's terrible!
Actually, I think this misconception of the speed of the 486 is due to people who are
1. Using serial port communications
2. Have a crappy serial port
I got this faulty logic when I was hunting for a SCSI rom drive for a 486sx PS/2. I was told by the staff "oh, it's a 486, well they can't use anything but a 1x drive anyway" and it's like "oh really, so I guess I have to use a 1x hard disk cause modern ones are just too damn fast".
My 8bit experence is pretty limited to the Atari, but I did own a scsi controler and had a 1meg ramdisk and let me tell you there was a serious peformance increase. Given the fact that it's practicaly impossible to get replacement drives and such for these vintage computers, it makes sence to go ethernet.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
I loved the C64, and 20 years later I still know some of the ROM routine addresses by heart (like the obvious $ffd2); but when I got down to studying the 1541 it was a revelation, I got the feeling for the first time there was code in there so clever I couldn't have written it myself. I was about 17 at the time, and it convinced me that I could actually learn something in CS. Ah, memories :)
From a cursory glance at the board, it looks like it plugs into the user port. That means it has access to the data lines from the 6526 VIA, which yields a single memory-mapped address for I/O.
...I think that adds up to 3 + 3 + 1 + 2 cycles per byte, and an overhead of at least 6 more cycles per page crossed. You could shave off two cycles out of the loop by using addresses in the zero page, but since some of those addresses are reserved, you wouldn't be able to use all 255 bytes.
That means the fastest you could write a page would be something like this:
STA 56579, 255
LDX, #0
LOOP:
LDA $BUFFER,X
STA 56577
DEX
BEQ LOOP
In order to do DMA, the controller would need to plug into the expansion port, which gives you direct access to the address and data lines of the system bus. But as another poster pointed out, you have to blank the video during transfers to achieve maximal throughput due to the VIC-IIs habit of stealing cycles for itself.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?