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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.
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.
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!
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.
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