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C64 Emulator Finally Approved For iPhone
Gi0 writes "After a couple of months of rejection, the C64 Emulator has finally been approved for the iPhone (and is available at the app store now). 'BASIC has been removed for this release; however, we hope that working with Apple further will allow us to re-enable it. Despite its absence, BASIC is not our focus; ultimately, fans of the C64 want games.' It comes with 5 bundled games and will certainly give you that retro fix for your iPhone."
"No programming on your iPhone, poseurs.
The iPhone is only to be used for gay, Apple approved activities, like soliciting meth and sex on Cragslist. "
-Steve Jobs
9/7/2009
You could run your own code
That's a DO NOT WANT for Apple
I hated that *^*%* game!
Played it for about a week just trying to get to the end. It required split-second skills to get past some of the guys. One night I finally get past the last guy and when I finnnaaallly get to the girl... she knifes me.
I was so pissed, I literally threw the floppy disk out the window. Nearly 20 years later I learned it was some dude in drag, and the real girl was behind "him".
Ohhh, and fuck that bird.
Video games have not been that hard for a long time.
The commodore ROMs and the individual games were licensed, but they had to remove the BASIC interpretor. The C64 interpretor said "Commodore BASIC, V2", but it was written by a little company that made money selling its version of 6502 BASIC.
I always knew which company made the barebones BASIC in the C64 because it had the same "print asc(0)" bug that the company provided in Atari, Apple, Amiga and IBM PC BASIC. The company also put an easter egg into Commodore 64 BASIC. When Commodore's Jack Tremail found out this OS vendor had wasted dozens of bytes of his precious ROM for their easter egg, he was furious. It's possible that Apple is still afraid of the license Jack Tramial signed in the early 80s because the little company which put bugs and easter eggs in their BASIC ROM is now a big company known as Microsoft! But more likely, Apple just doesn't want you to be able to run arbitrary applications on their iPhone. They want to control every end of the software development process and if you're able to type your own low-res game, chat application or amortization schedule in Commodore BASIC, Apple doesn't get any royalties. And we can't do fun things like:
10 poke 53265,59
20 wait 60,1
30 poke 53265,27
But frodo64 has provided FULL C64 emulation for Nokia phones for at least 3 years. I think I've run it on a pre 20th century Nokia phone. Nice try Apple, but if you open your OS development environment to those who don't buy your latest OS and hardware and/or if you allow Java applications, you might eventually have as many applications as other phones in the global marketplace. They might not be as flashy or have as polished of an interface, but they will work for the user and for the author.
It actually is sitting there, just not on the main screen..
Tap reset while in a game (keep the keyboard onscreen) and you're right at the prompt.
Now you can tweet or run a webserver too ;)
I think I've run it on a pre 20th century Nokia phone.
Did it have a big crank on the side?
"Operator! I want to speak to Frantic Freddy!"
>>>>>isn't the C64 pretty much just a BASIC interpreter? I thought just about everything for the C64 was written in BASIC
Oh my. I will assume you are less than 30, and forgive your ignorance. Yes the C=64 came with BASIC but most everything was *not* written in that because it was too darn slow. Most programs ran directly on the hardware.
>>Obviosuly, you never knew about BASICS's 'peek' and 'poke', in order to get assembly.
Those commands, being part of the Microsoft Basic set, would not be included in this Iphone emulator. Usually when you run games, word processors, internet browsers, or other programs on a C64 you type LOAD "PROGRAM",8,1 which directs the external drive to load that code directly into memory - overwriting everything that's present including the MS-BASIC. The computer than executes instructions directly at the maximum speed possible (i.e. no interpeter to slow things down).
Using this trick, programs can occupy all of the computer's memory except about 5 kilobytes (the screen space, interrupt handlers, and so on).
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Link.
>>>I won't post the link to it. It takes very little to induce the slashdot effect on that hard
A wise man. But here's some other cool Commodore=64 stuff to check out. Remember this stuff all works on a machine with only a 0.001 gigahertz processor and 0.064 megabytes of RAM.
- A web browser - http://www.armory.com/~spectre/cwi/hl/ :-)
- A 1984 Mac-style OS - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEOS_(8-bit_operating_system)
- A true multitasking OS - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Contiki-C64.png
- A photo viewer for your porn... oops, JPEGs - http://www.ffd2.com/fridge/jpeg/
- Okay here you go (NSFW) - http://girls.c64.org/
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
It seems that trying to predict Apple's actions is not terribly easy. I don't really care if they get Basic enabled. I really just want to play games.
What's interesting, however, is you can break into Basic in the app right now.
Here's how you do it.
1. Launch the app.
2. Tap the power button to power on the C64.
3. Tap the Advanced button on the bottom right.
4. Turn the option "Always show full keyboard" on.
5. Tap the "My Games" button on the lower left.
6. Run any game.
7. Tap the "Extra" button under the game screen.
8. Tap the RESET button on the left.
The app launches BASIC.
I don't know if it's fully functional, but it will run the "10 PRINT "I AM SO GREAT!!!!!!" / 20 GOTO 10" program, which is about the extent of my programming skills.
Disclaimer: I did not discover the above. It was posted on Engadget.
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
More worthless trash-and-trivia:
This Iphone app emulates the world's most popular CPU - the Commodore/MOS 6502 (and other variants). This processor was the heart of machines like the VIC-20 (10 million sold), C=64 or 128 (40 million), Atari 400/800 computers, Apple I/II/IIc/IIe computers, BBC Micro, Atari VCS/2600 and 5200 game consoles (40 million), Colecovision (10 million), Nintendo Entertainment System (60 million), plus many other applications like store registers and handheld calculators. In total over 200 million 6502s sold.
The 16-bit version called the 65816 (with 6502 backwards compatibility) ran the Apple IIgs, the SuperCPU C=64, and the Super Nintendo, and then the design was retired.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall