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Reviving a Commodore 64 Computer Using a Raspberry Pi
concertina226 (2447056) writes "A group of Commodore fans are working on a new emulator with the ability to turn the Raspberry Pi £30 computer into a fully functioning Commodore 64 fresh from the 1980s. Scott Hutter, creator of the Commodore Pi project, together with a team of developers on Github, are seeking to build a native Commodore 64 operating system that can run on Raspberry Pi. 'The goal will be to include all of the expected emulation features such as SID sound, sprites, joystick connectivity, REU access, etc. In time, even the emulation speed could be changed, as well as additional modern graphics modes,' he writes on his website."
We have had C64 emulators for a while.
The Raspberry PI is more than enough to do the work of a 30 year old personal
computer.
It isn't really that interesting the fact that it has been done.
But for the person who did it, I would say it was pretty cool that they tried.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
That this has been done before.
That board X from Y could do it too, and probably faster and cheaper and with extra shiny.
That your smart phone can already do this.
That you still need a keyboard and a mouse and a monitor.
Now how about some originality in the trolling for a change.
What would be genuinely cool, on the other hand, would be a board which went with it which included a SID socket and which implemented all the hardware interfaces, and which attached to the GPIO.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I currently have a dresser full of over 2000 C64/128 disks , system tools, etc. I have 2 working 64s 2 broken 64 and a working 128. I play with them from time to time but its so much work to keep them up and running (the 2 broken ones are used for parts these days) I wouldnt hate on this
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
I am still getting my PDP 11/70 ported to Raspberry Pi. RT11 and RSTS.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Agreed. These systems had a lot going for them at the time (I was a Spectrum guy myself) but so much has moved on. What would be interesting would be to bring the spirit of these old systems into the modern age rather than just replicate them wholesale. Boot into a system which allows you immediate programming (preferably with a modern OO syntax) and access to video, sound and peripherals. If there's anything that has suffered over the past three decades, it's easy access to I/O.
...that is all
... on a rasberry pi. I'm going to start patenting things already patented like a round shape... on a rasberry pi, rounded corners... on a rasberry pi, A closed SOC... on a rasberry pi, calculating taxes... on a rasberry pi, perpetual motion machine... on a rasberry pi and sue you all.
If there's anything that has suffered over the past three decades, it's easy access to I/O.
That's because it was one of the greatest sources of system crashes.
Give it a 10/10 for cool and an 8/10 for interesting. I guess not everyone's experiences with the C64 had the same value.
Also, of the other machines that existing c64 emulators run on, how many of them can be powered by two 9v batteries?
Why? Just get this http://simh.trailing-edge.com/ and compile it.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I use Vice on my desktop computer and Frodo C64 on my Android phone. Accordingly, I don't need an extra gadget to play with my Commodore 64.
Gamebase64 has everything you never needed to know about C64 games, Girls of '64 for everything in 8-bit nudity, and AppsnToolsBase64 for everything in utilities, business and productivity applications.
All c64 programs are tiny in modern terms; an uncompressed 1541 floppy disk image is only 170k. So you can carry every significant Commodore 64 program that was every released on a single flash drive or on your phone, and have plenty of room to spare.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
Can someone please explain this obsession with the Commodore 64? I don't understand why they would fixate on old technology when what we have now is far superior.
Can you not think of something better to do with your money and time.
Well, he could try posting on Slashdot -- or was that what you were referring to?
At least they stopped wanking to furry porn while working on it.
You're right, but the success of an emulator project like this is a practical prerequisite to generate enough demand for such a device.
[citation needed]
They might not have stopped.
Ah but there is something amusing about someone taking the successor of the BBC Model B and then using it to reproduce one of its main competitors from the period. However it's good to see that the 1980s 8-bit home computer religious wars finally ended in mutual cooperation! ;-)
Has anyone else noticed that Slashdot has started putting noise-making autoplay ads on some of the stories?
Does anyone else think this sucks balls?
Link to said furry porn?
Man, the hoops people jump thru over nostalgia for pixellated pr0n.
Table-ized A.I.
I second this. We have seen many true faithful emulators, what would be interesting would be interface for current systems that would make easy to program them as it was that easy to program the original Spectrum or C64. Maybe some adaption of the BASIC, or even machine code interpreters, but with more colours, and more sound capabilities for instance. It would make an interesting project, specially for my generation, that was used to program them, and maybe even for introducing newcomers.
Sorry, I liked the life size Gameboy better:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
New things are always on the horizon
The UDOO is pretty cool. It's a Linux (or android) computer, with an Arduino mixed in for the heck of it... so you get your easy programming environment and easy I/O all in one nice package (plus it does WiFi, Ethernet, USB, and a bunch of other cool things)
The Commodore 64 was right at the cusp of technology where a device could be almost fully understood by a dedicated layperson. If you picked up the Commodore 64 Programmers Reference Guide, you got 504 pages (1.4 lbs) of technical data, including a full system schematic. Low-level programming involved tweaking memory locations that were (effectively) hard-wired to chip pins, directly manipulating the state of the SID or modem chips. Want to watch tape I/O coming in through the bus? Just watch the right memory location.
Today's systems are far more powerful. But I bet most professional developers can't say they fully understand all of the timing, pipeline, memory I/O, bus architecture, video pipeline, and everything else that makes these machines great. There's a lot of "black box", even for the experts. Read Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book Special Edition if you want to see how much there is to know about optimizing even a single function in what is now a 20 year old machine.
The power of computing comes from abstraction. But the Commodore 64 (and the Apple ][) marked a tipping point when you could dig into the abstraction as a motivated beginner and strip away the layers until you were dealing with the bare metal. And there is power in that understanding. A bottom-to-top stack of knowledge that helps develop mental models that make more complex systems easier to understand. While my daughter has a very powerful laptop for school, way more powerful than a C-64, it highly unlikely that she or any of her peers will be able to peel the onion back to the physics of electricity like my generation was able to.
So I'd rather have today's tech. But I'm glad that I got to spend a lot of time with a C-64 in my youth, or I'd be nowhere near the programmer I am today. That's where the nostalgia comes in. Greatness in (relative) simplicity.
...before we invented decent systems like Oberon...
Ezekiel 23:20
hmmm, if only there was something like that already under our noses.
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
This link pretty much wraps it up:
http://elinux.org/RPi_Low-leve...
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
Can you not think of something better to do with your money and time.
You really came back to Slashdot after over 8 years just to say that?!
Or did you hack into someone's old account using the latest Heartbleed vulnerability... just to say that?!
http://www.templeos.org
An OS designed by a single guy so that he can communicate with God. Really. He speaks to God through his OS. Or so he thinks....
Anyway, I think his main motivation was to bring back the simplicity of the C64, but in a modern way.
Beware -- you will soon cross over into a world of insanity.
http://www.templeos.org/Wb/Accts/TS/Wb2/TempleOS.html
"The vision for TempleOS is a modern, 64-bit Commodore 64."
But like I said, the author is quite insane. Just...watch the video.
Yes, it is real and he is for real.
This weekend I was introduced to the wonderful world of UEFI.
Whoa momma... They put a whole extra level of indirection in there and I didnt even notice...
What would be interesting would be to bring the spirit of these old systems into the modern age rather than just replicate them wholesale. Boot into a system which allows you immediate programming
Wow. Who would have guessed that the whole point in the Raspberry Pi is things like that?
Boot into a system which allows you immediate programming
Like Bash? For me, Linux is what made computing interesting and fun again. It has easy access to programming tools, and none of this forced separation of users and developers.
(preferably with a modern OO syntax) and access to video, sound and peripherals. If there's anything that has suffered over the past three decades, it's easy access to I/O.
I admit it gets a little complex here, but for example Python (a key element in my "fun computing" experience) has nice libraries for these. For example, some of my electronics/FPGA work owe a lot to Python's serial port module. Not because the serial port is hard to program otherwise, but for making it easy to write all kinds of code around it.
I have no experience in modern graphics programming. However, I have the feeling that the bar for awesome graphics is a tad higher today than it was in "the year 64". Today's awesome is rather nontrivial at the direct low level we associate with C64 programming, so even professionals use higher level tools. (I think my background in physics and math helps appreciate 3D graphics, for example coordinate transformations using matrices are a basic (pun inteded) skill but I imagine there are lots of programmers with no need to do it.)
Nevertheless, I understand the point about recreating an environment in the '64 spirit. There are several projects around, the two I can think of at the moment being http://sol.gfxile.net/gp/ and http://pelulamu.net/ibniz/ .
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Make it duplicate my original Atari800 and my TRS-80mkI and we'll talk....
It was collecting dust, c'mon - admit it - yours was too.
I've got plenty of these one-board wonders, Texas Instruments Stellaris Launchpad anyone? Collecting dust? What? I still use my old JR51AC2 - (8051 type) devboard with my gazillion 87c51fc3 mcu's without needing yet another devboard for yet another processor & concept..., but hey...kudos for trying Braben.
Now...if I could only find an original cable for the SX-64 Computer (yes, for you noobs out there, that is a Commodore 64 all-in-one computer from 1984, featuring a small 5.5 inch Color screen, floppy disk and psu all-in-one, luggable) Worlds first color portable AFAIK. Yeah yeah, I can make one, but I'm a geezer...I prefer the original round cable one...got one? PM me!
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
if I want to see my c64 all i have to do is dig it out of the closet and hook it up my mm C1702 monitor and fire it up who needs an emulator LOL
It's nothing unless they emulate the 1541 and 1571 floppy drives, right down to their odd behaviours!
Now get off my lawn.
Was the first 1 on 1 fighting game to have health bars.
OK, I learned on the Apple ][, PET, VIC-20 (all 6502's) and a C64 (6510) as well... I also owned a Tandy CoCo (6809). And I remember how things were back then... But what's the point of all this nostalgic development effort to recreate the old machine, again? Hell, there are emulators that run on Linux that would work fine on the Raspberry Pi. Unless you're trying to recover some fundamentally necessary data or program, I just don't see the point. Move on man... Move on.
They say if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day... in the beginning, Linux was like teaching him to fish. Self-reliance and knowledge and skill are good things, but if you're just hungry and don't enjoy fishing, you just want the fish. Most people who use computers these days don't want to program - they just want to be given a fish.
I gotta chime in on this one.
Luckily I was a young enough whippersnapper that I didn't know better. But "Keypunch Software" took the IgNoble-80's prize.
They were notorious for using *Ascii* graphics moved by keystroke in their games!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Awww, I gotta chime in here too.
I was at the crucial intersection of age, difficulty, and timing between C64 and C128. C64 proved too difficult to Non-Genius me at 9. C128's extra commands allowed me at 12 to create some thirty programs, just enough to taste programming, but still hit Go64 to play the old games. A couple times in the passing decades Commodore Basic was the only language I could whip up a quick test experiment without learning entire new languages. RIP C128.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Will it require you to SMACK the restore key to get it to register?
Will it take 1.5 seconds to boot up?
If you press reset will you be able to switch the last bitmap in video RAM onto the screen (easier to do on the C=128 with included reset button and GRAPHICS command)?
Will the power supply be prone to overheating?
Will I/O be painfully slow?
All that said I miss my Commodore, despite all its faults. :-(
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Taking you seriously, this is one of Nostalgia's finest moments.
A ton of us were *exactly* in the right range to use of the three or four Commodore comps from the mid 80's to change the worldview outlook forever. We don't pretend to do much more than hobby projects with them now. But those are the comps that *made us*. It was back when computing, and a little light hacking, was fun. The NSA wasn't (overly) noticeably destroying computer infrastructure. You could get a few long distance calls. Make a few Maze games. Make a couple of Eliza clones. Play seven Pacman clones. Ultimate Wizard. Bang out a homework essay and even get it to print.
It's about the Simpler Time. Nothing _____.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
How about the Raspberry Pi as an Apple II "peripheral"? https://ultimateapple2.com/cat...
doesn't mean you should. Kudos to the folks that did it though.
You might be interested in this then:
http://wiki.icomp.de/wiki/C64_...
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
G0 AWAY C0MM0D0RE LAMERZ!!! UNT1L U G3T 4 R33L SYST3M
4ND N0T 4 T0Y, G0 B4CK 2 UR CNET BOA#`%${%&`+'${`%&
NO CARRIER
I forgot which story, but it was only a few days ago when someone on /. posted about the Maximite, which sounds like what you described.
http://geoffg.net/maximite.htm...
I've been fascinated by it ever since, and intend to get the kit next time I can sit down to play with it.
-- "This world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel."
Said author is brilliant but suffers from schizophrenia. He hears multiple voices in his head and can't control them. He's almost impossible to talk to because of this, as he gets sidetracked and the "voice of God" leads him way off the rails.
That said, his OS is the best April Fools joke you can play on any one in your office. Remove their desktop hard drive and replace it with a disk that boots into this!
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
There s absolutely now way to get a cassette tape recorder on that little board.
Unfortunately there is not a C=64 emu that can perfectly emulate the hardware Not sure what value it would be to get one running on a Pi Archon? Ultima4?
Can you not think of something better to do with your money and time.
Agreed. They should be doing something original at least. What's next, a Super Mario for Raspberry Pi?
Came for the keys, stayed for the graphics. Where's that bespoke cassette player?
Do we really need yet another C64 emulator? It would be more interesting to see emulator folks working on something a bit rarer which doesn't already have an emulator, like an IBM 5100 or something.
gb2yospos
"as well as additional modern graphics modes"
Then it's *NOT* a C64.
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
Reviving means repairing, replacing caps and other components. (which I haven't have to do on my Nintendos and C64s)
This is really turning out as another reddit forum
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
They say if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day... in the beginning, Linux was like teaching him to fish. Self-reliance and knowledge and skill are good things, but if you're just hungry and don't enjoy fishing, you just want the fish. Most people who use computers these days don't want to program - they just want to be given a fish.
I'm afraid you forgot the link: http://fishshell.com/
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
I reincarnated myself from a grain of sand to tell you to lick my balls.
I let my C64 go already. Still have a 1541, can't bear to actually throw it away but they're not really worth much and who knows if it even still works.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I use a PCI card called the Catweasel for my emulation purposes.
It allows SID chips to be socket into it, commodore joysticks, and floppy drives.
Whats neat is that you can make the emulators use the SID chip instead of software emulation.
Though to be honest I haven't tried that aspect of it yet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual_Computers_Catweasel
The ARMiga is a cooler project.
The prototype is also based on a RasPi, but it will also allow real Amiga floppy disk access and come in the form factor of an original Amiga external drive.
http://www.armigaproject.com/
I need to work out how to switch UEFI off. I rebooted without my hard-drive attached and when I rebooted it after reattaching, it had forgotten all about it and refused to even recognize that an OS was present. It was somewhat of a pain to get it to recognize it again.
And in case anyone has the same issue and ends up here, the fix was I had to boot the install CD in UEFI mode as if you boot it in legacy mode, the right /dev devices are not created and the elilo install doesn't work.
And there is/was a bug in the creation of the elilo config file with a LVM setup (Slackware 14.1). I reported that though.
You missed the point. Perhaps you never used one of these systems.
No. I won't bash bash (though I tend to go straight to Perl if I can) but it isn't suitable for what I'm talking about either in accessibility or capability. Booting into javascript (for its sins) would probably be closer.
Hey, where my computing history comes from, ASCII was an upgrade :)
Yes. That sounds like it's closest to what I'm thinking of out of all I've heard so far. I'll look into that further.