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."

Comments

Trying to change history

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:FW

[friendofthenite]

To enable you to Tweet in between games of Attack of the Mutant Camels.

Re:Software really has yet to catch up to hardware

[FranTaylor]

The old quote: "Every time Andy gives me more horsepower, Bill takes it away."

Re:Software really has yet to catch up to hardware

[peppepz]

True, but... if we can reach such achievements on a C64, it’s also because we can use nice development tools, running on much beefier machines, programmed using cycles-eating high level languages, with the comforts of a contemporary operating system. I don’t think Contiki was programmed on a C64 monitor cartridge, in 6510 assembly.

Re:Software really has yet to catch up to hardware

[houghi]

Wrong, you decide to give it to Bill. I decide to give it to Linus and he asks for a lot less.

Re:Software really has yet to catch up to hardware

[Jurily]

I decide to give it to Linus and he asks for a lot less.

Care to count how many layers of abstraction there are between a typical GUI application and the bare metal on a modern *nix?

Re:FW

[VanessaE]

That "800" baud comment shows that you don't know that much about technology, especially as it relates to the C64. Aside from there not being any modems of that speed for any platform, the C64 is capable of much higher speeds anyway. Speeds up to about 460 kbps are possible via RS232 adaptors, with 115kbps being most common and practical. A properly designed application and hardware interface can pass data in and out of a stock C64 at up to around 40 kB/sec through PIO device. Add DMA to that, and the C64 passes data back and forth at about 1 MB/sec. Depending on the application, data can be processed at around 30 kB/sec.

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.

Re:Software really has yet to catch up to hardware

[Penguin]

Care to count how many layers of abstraction there are between a typical GUI application and the bare metal on a modern *nix?

I look forward to reading /. in fifteen years.

"Windows FOX is bloated. Why does it require 2 TB of ram just to boot when I can browse the intercloud without problems on Gnubun*x running with only 512 GB ram?"