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.
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?"
1. VirtualBox is better optimized for XP (or vice verse). Linux is known to be slower there. Try real equipment.
2. Clean XP install is as useless as a snooze button on a smoke alarm. Install software, for Gods sake! And don't forget an antivirus. We aren't talking about clean lab environment, it's a harsh real virtual world outside.
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.
And because on a C64, you do not expect all the little features, grapics, etc. Like a spell checker, an animated mouse cursor semi-transparent high-color smooth-moving windows. many of them. An MP3 stream playing it he background, with an OSD poppig up. An instant messenger for 5 different networks running in the background. Sub-pixel-anti-aliased beautiful vector fonts, with different styles, intelligent breaking on the field end, full HTML+CSS+JavaScript+DOM+flash rendering/interpreting, automatic error c
There's obviously a lot of truth to the ease of programming using high level tools, and standing on other's shoulders, but back in the day we made do with what we had. I used to work for Acorn Computers (UK) back in 1982, and was one half of the team that implemented ISO Pascal for the 6502-based BBC Micro...
The project was divided into two halves (shipped on two 16K EPROMS), one half being a stack-based virtual instruction set for the compiler to target (to get reasonable code density), Pascal run-time lib
by Anonymous Coward
on Sunday June 14, @04:24AM (#28325439)
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.
Actually, if you RTFA, he didn't develop the TCP/IP interface.
This project uses an "MMC replay" C64 expansion box with an RR-net ethernet daughterboard installed. He wrote the Twitter client to run on the Contiki OS, which comes with a built-in TCP/IP stack and a driver for the RR-card. Credit for Contiki and it's uIP TCP/IP stack go primarily to Adam Dunkels:
The accomplishment of the C64 Twitter client's author is really more about writing a Twitter client with one hand tied behind your back rather than really being C64 specific. He wrote it in C (CC65 6502 compiler) on Contiki, so the fact that it happens to be running on a C64 as opposed to any other environment that supports Contiki is somewhat irrelevant.
Whether it scores any points for complexity really depends on your level of experience. Given that the./ readership has become less and less hard core over the years, I think there are many people here who should be avoiding this guy's front lawn. At least, if you've never written any networking code in your life, how about firing up Linux, or installing MinGW (maybe roughly comparable to installing Contiki and CC65 on a C64), then writing your own Twitter client... It certainly won't be a waste of time if you learn how to do socket programming as a result.
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.
The drives your talking about are probably the 8050 quad density drive series (and the SFD-1001 - which was for the C64)) - 1 megabyte as I recall. Two problems with them - a) they were hard to buy and b) quad density disks are impossible to find (you can't even use pc high density disks with them). Still the one I saw demo'd was incredibly quick.
1541 used a 300 baud serial interface to the pc itself. In non burst mode programs took forever and a day to load or save - it wasn't entirely uncommon for a 15-20 minute load time.
Still it was light years faster than tape (which was less than 50 baud).
Yup - C64 was a complete hack, but you couldn't beat it for the price. For about 800-900 dollars you could have the PC and the 1541, where Apple ][ of the same vintage was 1500$+ with no accessories at all.
1541 used a 300 baud serial interface to the pc itself.
That did not sound right. According to Wikipedia, it used a proprietary
serial version of IEEE-488. "Without hardware modifications, some "fast loader" utilities managed to achieve speeds of up to 4 kB/s."
Lots of people know more about it than I do but the 1541 is basically a computer, IIRC it's about as powerful as the C64 itself. You could write loader code for both the drive and computer and achieve far more speed than letting the system just go forth and handle things for you. See also Epyx Fastload [wikipedia.org]
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.:)
The first, and obvious, salvo into the Speccy camp: your rubbery toy didn't have a decent keyboard, a decent GPU, sound processor or disk drive, and now... you guys miss out on the 21st century, too;o)
Slug away, have at it!
(P.S. this is all tongue-in-cheek. I actually wish I had a Speccy - there was a ton of great software for that little beast)
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?
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!
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!
Many peripherals used to be controlled by dedicated bit-slice processors which were faster at instruction execution than the main CPU. However, they had their operating code in ROM, had a limited instruction set, and had very limited memory. In the days when memory was expensive, this was a sensible tradeoff. Many early 8-bit CPUs were simply not fast enough to control a floppy disc drive and do anything else (hence the Commodore solution.)
Try writing a useful program on one of those bit-slice efforts, thou
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.
by Anonymous Coward
on Sunday June 14, @08:47AM (#28326203)
"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".
Why, so that kids in Afghanistan can use Twitter, of course!
(Can't believe I'm the first to mention this. Has Jon Katz really been scrubbed from the collective-Slashdot memory?)
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!
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.).
You are on Slashdot and you need explanation to see that implementing a Twitter client on a C64 is totally cool?
I think the question isn't "Why are they implementing a Twitter client on a C64?". I think it's the same question I had: Why are they loading this from 5.25" floppies?
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...
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.
Command line video editing along the lines of audio editing with SOX wouldn't be so bad either.
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.
I think you're wrong. If we were stuck with 1999 era hardware, we'd put a lot more work into optimization, and we'd get a lot more done with the same hardware. And, if you can find a carpenter who can build a timber frame [popularmechanics.com] house without nails, you're likely to get a much better quality house, but of course, more expensive.
If someone told me I was stuck at a text console from now on, I'd be OK (if grousy) about it. Until that day comes, I'd just as soon let this computer look pretty and
Software really has yet to catch up to hardware (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Software really has yet to catch up to hardware (Score:5, Funny)
The old quote: "Every time Andy gives me more horsepower, Bill takes it away."
Parent
Re:Software really has yet to catch up to hardware (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong, you decide to give it to Bill. I decide to give it to Linus and he asks for a lot less.
Parent
Re:Software really has yet to catch up to hardware (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Parent
Re:Software really has yet to catch up to hardware (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Software really has yet to catch up to hardware (Score:5, Funny)
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?"
Parent
Re:Software really has yet to catch up to hardware (Score:4, Informative)
1. VirtualBox is better optimized for XP (or vice verse). Linux is known to be slower there. Try real equipment.
2. Clean XP install is as useless as a snooze button on a smoke alarm. Install software, for Gods sake! And don't forget an antivirus. We aren't talking about clean lab environment, it's a harsh real virtual world outside.
Parent
Re:Software really has yet to catch up to hardware (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Software really has yet to catch up to hardware (Score:5, Interesting)
Not all companies back then developed directly on the C64 either.
There were dev tools for the PC for the C64 for example.
I don't think its cheating to use a bigger PC to develop a complex app for a smaller machine ;).
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And because on a C64, you do not expect all the little features, grapics, etc. Like a spell checker, an animated mouse cursor semi-transparent high-color smooth-moving windows. many of them. An MP3 stream playing it he background, with an OSD poppig up. An instant messenger for 5 different networks running in the background. Sub-pixel-anti-aliased beautiful vector fonts, with different styles, intelligent breaking on the field end, full HTML+CSS+JavaScript+DOM+flash rendering/interpreting, automatic error c
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
There's obviously a lot of truth to the ease of programming using high level tools, and standing on other's shoulders, but back in the day we made do with what we had. I used to work for Acorn Computers (UK) back in 1982, and was one half of the team that implemented ISO Pascal for the 6502-based BBC Micro...
The project was divided into two halves (shipped on two 16K EPROMS), one half being a stack-based virtual instruction set for the compiler to target (to get reasonable code density), Pascal run-time lib
Trying to change history (Score:5, Funny)
Contiki? (Score:3, Funny)
Wait wait wait... (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Where does it say this? Read the article - he's using a standard ethernet connection.
Twitter isn't exactly an intensive application (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Twitter isn't exactly an intensive application (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, if you RTFA, he didn't develop the TCP/IP interface.
This project uses an "MMC replay" C64 expansion box with an RR-net ethernet daughterboard installed. He wrote the Twitter client to run on the Contiki OS, which comes with a built-in TCP/IP stack and a driver for the RR-card. Credit for Contiki and it's uIP TCP/IP stack go primarily to Adam Dunkels:
http://www.sics.se/~adam/ [www.sics.se]
The accomplishment of the C64 Twitter client's author is really more about writing a Twitter client with one hand tied behind your back rather than really being C64 specific. He wrote it in C (CC65 6502 compiler) on Contiki, so the fact that it happens to be running on a C64 as opposed to any other environment that supports Contiki is somewhat irrelevant.
Whether it scores any points for complexity really depends on your level of experience. Given that the ./ readership has become less and less hard core over the years, I think there are many people here who should be avoiding this guy's front lawn. At least, if you've never written any networking code in your life, how about firing up Linux, or installing MinGW (maybe roughly comparable to installing Contiki and CC65 on a C64), then writing your own Twitter client... It certainly won't be a waste of time if you learn how to do socket programming as a result.
Parent
Re:Twitter isn't exactly an intensive application (Score:4, Funny)
What sort of caveman could possible have a use for it?
Og tweet about playing Ultima III:
Og swallowed by whirlpool.
Og now mad and smash phone.
Parent
Much Faster Floppy Drive for the C64 (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Much Faster Floppy Drive for the C64 (Score:4, Interesting)
The drives your talking about are probably the 8050 quad density drive series (and the SFD-1001 - which was for the C64)) - 1 megabyte as I recall. Two problems with them - a) they were hard to buy and b) quad density disks are impossible to find (you can't even use pc high density disks with them). Still the one I saw demo'd was incredibly quick.
1541 used a 300 baud serial interface to the pc itself. In non burst mode programs took forever and a day to load or save - it wasn't entirely uncommon for a 15-20 minute load time.
Still it was light years faster than tape (which was less than 50 baud).
Yup - C64 was a complete hack, but you couldn't beat it for the price. For about 800-900 dollars you could have the PC and the 1541, where Apple ][ of the same vintage was 1500$+ with no accessories at all.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
1541 used a 300 baud serial interface to the pc itself.
That did not sound right. According to Wikipedia, it used a proprietary serial version of IEEE-488. "Without hardware modifications, some "fast loader" utilities managed to achieve speeds of up to 4 kB/s."
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Lots of people know more about it than I do but the 1541 is basically a computer, IIRC it's about as powerful as the C64 itself. You could write loader code for both the drive and computer and achieve far more speed than letting the system just go forth and handle things for you. See also Epyx Fastload [wikipedia.org]
Re:Much Faster Floppy Drive for the C64 (Score:4, Informative)
Yep, there's plenty of flash-storage solutions for the C64. I'm using MMC replay (http://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/MMC_Replay [c64-wiki.com]) and uIEC (http://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/uIEC [c64-wiki.com])
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
you mean like the 1541 ultimate ( http://www.1541ultimate.net/ [1541ultimate.net] )?
Before anyone asks... (Score:5, Insightful)
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. :)
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:5, Funny)
Are you talking about the C64 project or Twitter?
Parent
Speccy vs. C64 slugfest - start here! (Score:3, Funny)
The first, and obvious, salvo into the Speccy camp: your rubbery toy didn't have a decent keyboard, a decent GPU, sound processor or disk drive, and now... you guys miss out on the 21st century, too ;o)
Slug away, have at it!
(P.S. this is all tongue-in-cheek. I actually wish I had a Speccy - there was a ton of great software for that little beast)
Re:Speccy vs. C64 slugfest - start here! (Score:4, Informative)
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?
Parent
Re:Speccy vs. C64 slugfest - start here! (Score:4, Interesting)
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!
Parent
Not good enough (Score:5, Funny)
I want to know where the twitter client is for my VIC-20.
Contiki (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
The Commodore as I/O Device- A dumb terminal (Score:3, Insightful)
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!
Define "more powerful processor" (Score:3, Interesting)
Try writing a useful program on one of those bit-slice efforts, thou
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:FW (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Im sending this to my dad in the hopes he will revive the ole 64 back home.
Re:FW (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:FW (Score:4, Informative)
"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 [wikipedia.org]
C64 AMC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhKf3DcPk08 [youtube.com]
C64 Gridrunner: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRq6e1f85KY [youtube.com]
Jeff's "Revenge of the Mutant Camels" was completely insane...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge_of_the_Mutant_Camels [wikipedia.org]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymVvsPczrwk [youtube.com]
The More You Know...
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:FW (Score:5, Insightful)
How can anything to do with Twitter be cool?
Parent
Re:FW (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:FW (Score:4, Informative)
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.).
Parent
Wrong why? (Score:3, Funny)
I think the question isn't "Why are they implementing a Twitter client on a C64?". I think it's the same question I had: Why are they loading this from 5.25" floppies?
Re:Wrong why? (Score:4, Interesting)
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/ [1541ultimate.net]
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
"Nerds that never get laid"
You mean like "Desert that never gets wet" or "Rock that never gets hungry"
Re:i can feel a tv series comming (Score:5, Funny)
"Nerds that never get laid"
At least we know there'll never be a Nerds that Never get Laid TNG.
Parent
Re:I call "cheating" (Score:4, Insightful)
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...
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If I had to edit my films and create my graphics in a text terminal, I'd have to kill somebody. Probably you. No offense.
As much as I enjoyed using Gopher and Lynx on my Atari, I've moved on to using a 100% necessary GUI for many of my computing needs.
Re:Not necessarily so funny (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you're wrong.
I think you're wrong. If we were stuck with 1999 era hardware, we'd put a lot more work into optimization, and we'd get a lot more done with the same hardware. And, if you can find a carpenter who can build a timber frame [popularmechanics.com] house without nails, you're likely to get a much better quality house, but of course, more expensive.
If someone told me I was stuck at a text console from now on, I'd be OK (if grousy) about it. Until that day comes, I'd just as soon let this computer look pretty and