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A Twitter Client For the Commodore 64
An anonymous reader writes "Johan Van den Brande has developed a Twitter client for the Commodore 64, allowing 140-character messages to be posted directly from this TV-connected 1982 home computer. This YouTube video shows how the Twitter client is — slowly! — loaded from a 5.25" floppy disk, how the latest Twitter messages are downloaded and shown on the TV screen, and how this tweet is posted. All that is needed is a C64, a TV, and a C64 Ethernet card. The Twitter client is implemented with the Contiki operating system, which otherwise is used for connecting tiny embedded systems to the Internet."
Friend at Intel corp said once - that software we are running will be really impressive once they catch up to the hardware. I think the Commodore 64 really goes to show what can be done on a really minimal environment.
By releasing a client in the past Twitter will have become an integral part of our lives in the future. The only solution is to send a robot back in time to kill Jack Dorsey before he is born.
To enable you to Tweet in between games of Attack of the Mutant Camels.
The hardest parts of doing this will be the TCP/IP stack and drivers to connect to the internet.
The messages are not long/require lots of screen realestate or memory.
It certainly scores *cool* points for making exceptionally OLD hardware do very new things, but it doesn't score points for difficulty or complexity.
But if someone finds it useful, then it wasn't a waste of time.
There is a Commodore IEEE-bus floppy drive that works great with a C64 with the right adapter. It takes 1.2 Mb floppies and it makes a 1541 look really sad. It was radically expensive at the time and I remember how annoyed my boss was when I told him the price.
We actually had it pretty good even back then. We had a Kontron 6510 ICE so we could go in and figure out exactly what was going on with that weird video hardware, and it was great for finding those odd bugs.
I still cannot believe how badly those 1541 floppy drives sucked. They are the most miserable pieces of computer gear I have ever encountered. It is just beyond belief that someone has managed to keep one working after all these years!
I liked the Atari 800 much better. The video hardware had a much cleaner design and it was a lot easier to code for.
"Nerds that never get laid"
At least we know there'll never be a Nerds that Never get Laid TNG.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
To do that you'd have to have a serial adapter as well - so where do you draw the line?
By definition even - the 1541 (to load the program for those who don't know) isn't original C64 equipment (I couldn't even get one when I bought my C64 new - had to use tapes :)).
Yeah - a completely stock C64 is pretty hard to use...
Before anyone asks why someone bothered to do this, I'll answer it - because they can. Simple as that.
It has no practical use, that's for sure, but not everyone needs to be done to have a practical use. Some stuff is just cool. That's why we have these things called hobbies. I certainly wouldn't have invested my time into getting something like this to work, but I can't disparage anyone who does. It's a hobby. I would even argue that it does not reflect one way or another on a person's ability to get laid. :)
How can anything to do with Twitter be cool?
After having to slog through a million and one boring PS3/Xbox360 fanboy wars on pretty much every forum out there, is there anyone else who finds the prospect of a spectrum/C64 slugfest actually quite appealing?
And have I been spending too much time on the Internet?
Is this a new fucking meme? Are all these guys asking "why" kidding or what? It's been a hacker/geek tradition since the very first days after the world has been created to pull off amazingly weird hacks just for the sake of the fun involved. What's wrong with /., god damn!
I want to know where the twitter client is for my VIC-20.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
The C64 vs. Spectrum slugfests on usenet are legendary, and used to happen once or twice a year. And they were always hilarious! I mean, we're all grown ups with the wit of a child, and nobody is stupid there - it's really done for the fun of it. It does get deeply technical at times, but the humor is always present.
Slashdot has nothing on those long-winded usenet threads where we cudgel each other good!
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
It's barely a hack. Each of the pieces is pretty much being used for its intended purpose (the C64 is being used as a general computing device, the network card is being used as a network card, there is some software, etc.).
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Thats cheating, really its not a C64, its an embedded machine that happens to have composite video output.
Running an embedded OS on an 8 bit processor is common place. REAL common place.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"Attack of the Mutant Camels" refers to completely different games (both by Jeff Minter, mind) in Europe and America.
In Europe, "Attack of the Mutant Camels" was a little bit like defender (with giant radioactive space camels). In America, the game released as "Attack of the Mutant Camels" was what the Europeans call "Gridrunner".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_of_the_Mutant_Camels
C64 AMC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhKf3DcPk08
C64 Gridrunner: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRq6e1f85KY
Jeff's "Revenge of the Mutant Camels" was completely insane...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge_of_the_Mutant_Camels
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymVvsPczrwk
The More You Know...
In schemes like this, the Commodore itself is just a thin layer of the user interface. There is definitely a more powerful processor than the 6502 on the Ethernet Card. Most of the processor intensive networking layers are 'contained' on the Ethernet Card, just as is/was the case with primitive processors like the 8088 communicating via Ethernet.
Almost any 'expansion' of the Commodore involves adding a 'peripheral' containing a co-processor at least, and sometimes significantly more powerful than the 6502 in the Commodore. The 1541 disk drive has a 6502 processor in it. A Commodore 'Hard Drive' has a processor more powerful than the C64 it attaches to. So, really, this is no different than attaching a dumb terminal to a proprietary PC and claiming it's 'A Twitter Client for a Dumb Terminal.'
Heck, I could attach a largish 44780-based LCD display and a P2/2 keyboard to one of the smaller PIC controllers and hang it off a linux box as a terminal and do about the same thing. Or, better yet, just attach a TDD terminal to the linux box. Wow! A Twitter Client for the TDD! Maybe I can get funding for 'facilitating' something to aid the handicapped!
Not to mention that, as stated in the summary, this program uses an Ethernet device. I don't own one myself, so I can't be sure of the maximum practical speed, but based on my own hacking and programming on the C64 with PIO and DMA devices, I would guess data moves around at 20-30 kB/sec including TCP/IP and Twitter protocol processing overhead, on an otherwise stock machine.
Although this particular application doesn't need anything beyond an Ethernet device, solutions also exist to counter any CPU, storage, or RAM constraints that a C64 user might run up against.
If it makes you feel any better I've been loading it off of an SDHC card that is inside of a cartridge that emulates a 1541 disk drive.
http://www.1541ultimate.net/
On the contrary, I've used POV, probably the initial release and on that same Atari. Hell, I think I've even used DKBTrace. I've written my own GUI-less raytracers as well. It's kind of hard to do a magazine layout with POV, or design packaging, or create a logo, or composite effects into video. I've moved on to professional tools and will never look back unless I have some very specific need that only POV can fill. For procedural graphics and scientific visualization, it can be great. It's wonderful for hobbyists on a budget, or those in love with raytracing and willing to get their hands dirty, or those who want to learn more about raytracing in general. For work in a production environment? Get real. It continues to make advances, but it's still ten years behind the curve, and completely unwieldy for most CGI tasks. I have a friend who loves POV, she does all her game graphics with it. It shows.
CLI video editing? You must be on the moon. You're certainly not an editor, unless your idea of editing is ripping DVDs. I cut my editing teeth on 3/4" U-matic tape. Then I moved up to a CMX, which is a computerized analog linear editing system with a text interface and dedicated console and computer controlled VTRs. Then I moved up to a traditional, computerized, timeline-based NLE with analog capture/playback, and then eventually digital I/O. Today I use a next-generation NLE which is much faster and much more efficient than any form of editing before it or currently available from other vendors. Without those advances, I'd still be working on the first film. When a film has 1000+ edits, with each of those edits being tweaked up to seven or eight times, and each of those shots selected from twenty times as much logged footage, you don't want to screw around. What I do today, and what I do to stay competitive, would be virtually impossible and utterly impractical without a GUI. Film is a visual medium. It makes no sense not to edit it in a visually way. Would you edit audio without speakers or ears? I'm sure SoX is a fine tool, probably great in a proper tool chain, but you're on goofy pills if you think it's any kind of substitute for Pro Tools. I doubt you'll find a single musician that uses SoX for anything but purely utilitarian purposes (as opposed to creative ones), and even then, I'm doubtful.
+0 Meh