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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."
Now I can play Tank! With my friends in Iraq!
It'll be the first ever time the CPU bus is a bottleneck to the Internet connection
All this with a computer that is old enough to drink
Am I the only person who has no idea just what in the hell that is supposed to mean?
And oh yeah, good job on the ethernet stuff for the C64.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
"...All this with a computer that is old enough to drink." uh....to drink? since when do things get so old that you can drink them?
Does this mean that some day, following a screwy bit of logical progression, I'll be able to run WindowMaker on my TI-56?
I can hardly wait! *hop*
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
I was beginning to fear that I would have to upgrade at some point!
E.
Never rub another man's rhubarb - The Joker
Okay, start posting "C= 64 was the 'my first'/'last real'/'first real'/'best' computer/piece of crap" messages.
I finally got networked play going for my Atari 2600.
I gotta tell you, being able to play "Combat" head-to-head over the Internet is an absolute revolution in gaming!
any DSL modem or router is probably at least a hundred times faster than a C64.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
You can see the AMD square/arrow logo on the corner of one of the chips. Cool.
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
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.
(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!
Get ready for lots of 40-column width formatted Slashdot postings! :)
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
Wow, and the way that the contiki webbrowser is designed you can even view site like slashdot who's html is larger than the amount of RAM in the machine itself!
Your junk C=64 machine sucks. My Atari rules. ATASCII is soo much better than that ugly ASCII you have to use.
I was going to post this in all caps like any kid back then would have, but I decided to save everyone's eyes. (I think the lameness filter would have stoped that)
Really? In my day we used to have 386/33 machines with 4 10Mbit ethernet cards running Novell Netware, and several large hard disks. You're not running Windows, by any chance are you?
Stick Men
What a great idea to limit bandwidth usage. Hookup up a C64 as a firewall and *presto* you are blocking ports and keeping the P2P usage down to 2K/sec. Burn the firewall code to a start-up cartridge ROM, make the C64 run off a 12V battery with a DC-DC converter for the needed +/-5V. Throw the whole thing in a black box with a solar panel on top and sell it as the next big thing in network security.
20% of the people in the world are hungry.
Shouldn't you be out feeding them instead of:
1) reading slashdot
2) reading a story on slashdot you don't think is worthy
3) reading, and then commenting on a story on slashdot that you don't think is worthy
By your line of reasoning, nearly everything is offtopic and not relevant except for the bare necessities of life. What a very painful existance you must lead.
The important thing to learn from this is that when it comes down to what the average user wants to do with a computer, the new ultra fast Xtreme P4 is not necessary. Surfing the web, email, and word processing can be done with a sub $100 computer system given the correct software.
This also brings up the sheer amount of unneccessary bloat in alot of software today.
----
Squirrel
It's not in manual but let me reveal:
you can connect an original arcade(r) stick to the internet adaptor. By wiggling it left-right really fast you can help the adaptor process packets, thus upgrading its speed.
It's bad enough that people who try putting their C64 on the Internet will probably lose all of their valuable data. What really worries me, though, is a plague of dozens of zombie C64 machines under the control of hackers bringing down valuable services like Google and Yahoo with DDoS attacks.
It means that, in order to run at a decent speed, you have to overclock the C64's 6502 so much that it requires a water cooling setup.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
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
I would compare the stock 64 speed with it to about a 600 baud terminal connection (not bad for 1mghz displaying in hi-res mode), easy enough to read without stopping the stream (there is no buffer in the web browser, sice contiki uses a lot of the 64's 58k or so of accessible memory.)
With the C64 20 mghz accellerator, SuperCPU (by CMD - now offered by Commodore Key,) the speed matches a modern PC - albeit a slower one.
To sum it up, given the tight memory and small amount of hardware needed now - it sure opens up opportunities for some low-end internet projects. (even grander ones when people with RAM expansions start developing for it) I hope one day someone makes a Commodore C/G BBS and C64 Telenet Client using them or maybe a internet variation of the old Commodore Q-Link network (Q-Link was AOL before they became AOL).
Also with the eventual release of the ultra-cool reconfigurable computer - the C-One (which can use the RR-Net card) and Jeri Ellsworth's (she created the C-One) work on an Apple II interface which I believe also has similar capabilities - you are proably going to hear about a lot more 8-bitters on the internet with their little computers. :-)
But realistically I am hoping 'The Final Ethernet' card (which is just the Ethernet adapter interfaced to the 64) gets developed though, using the Retro Replay Utility Cartridge as an intemediary ads a buch of $$ to the price (I'm a Commodore fanatic, I had to buy one, not everyone would like those prices though.)
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
It's just not the same as the feeling I got when my 300 baud modem finally came in the mail that fateful day, now that was broadband back then. I remember dialing up to Q-Link, which I believe became AOL. I remember picking up a Basic game programming book and not leaving my computer room for 3 days until I had programmed and saved them all. I may have to dig out the old keyboard and try this for myself. I think my monitor is wonky though. And I do have that sweet 128 cartridge that plugs into the back of the keyboard. Blue screen=good, green screen=even better.
I hate sigs.
In the spirit of an ethernet card for the C64 I'm working on the following:
1. Climbing with gear from the 1800's
2. Souping up a Model T
3. Creating a fully automatic muzzle loader
4. Compression scemes for 5.25" floppies
5. Teaching a VERY old dog new tricks
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
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.
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()?