Tweet from a Commodore 64? We Do That and More to Celebrate the Beloved PC’s 30th Birthday - cabreraaltatter
Thirty years ago, Commodore Business Machines released the Commodore 64, an 8-bit home personal computer that became an painting cultural hale.
With its low price and considerable graphical prowess, the Commodore 64 served primarily as a game console for millions of users, although many too took advantage of its full potential difference as a programmable general-purpose-purpose figurer.
To celebrate the 30th day of remembrance of this legendary PC (it started selling in the first week of 1982), I sequestered myself in a calm down room with an unquestionable 1982 Commodore 64 for one week. The goal: to see if I could bugger off any work finished a machine that possesses a miniscule fraction of the RAM and CPU power of computers commonly in use today.
A year ago, I spent a week with the IBM Personal computer 5150, putting information technology through a similar challenge. Unlike the IBM Microcomputer, however, the Commodore 64 (or C64) was not designed as a high-end business machine, making productiveness tasks a little harder to draw off.
Despite the betting odds weighing against me, I was determined to put back the C64 through its paces as a writing, gaming, and yes, Internet machine. By the end of the week, I would judge my winner rank by the enumerate of hairs left connected my head. As it sour out, I didn't wind up nearly as bald as I thought I would.
Day 1: Setting Up
Of the ten original C64 units I have owned (all second-hand), only three of them really worked. I'm a computer collector, and most old computers I run across lic just small-grained despite their age—only not the C64. (To add insult to injury, over the past few years, I've had two of those working C64 units fail connected me during diarrhoetic utilisation.)
In the C64's case, I've found that the biggest cause of unsuccessful person is heat and poor ventilation. High temperature causes all kinds of problems in electronics, from warped lap boards to flat-out microcircuit bankruptcy. The C64 does not hold in a fan, and its hot-running chips are close low-level a cardboard RF shield, with the system of rules's internal components packed like sardines in a sickly ventilated plastic type. You can see what I mean from this photo I took in 2008:
Yes, I said that right: unlifelike. To reduce costs in manufacturing, Commodore opted to forgo the common sheet-metal RF carapace (which prevents the C64's circuitry from Telly reception interference) in favour of unrivalled composed of compressed paper black-coated with a thin metallic foil. Apparently, it worked, but unreal isn't famed for its stir up semiconductive qualities.
(For more info on the intrinsical building of the Commodore 64, check out this teardown slideshow I did for PCWorld in 2008.)
On top of altogether that, the C64's circuit design isn't quite as rich as it should be, making it very simple to fry things if you short the wrong pins together on its various connectors. And Commodore's baron transformers (call up "brick on a leash") get extremely hot and tend to melting their plastic cases and then miscarry over time. Fundamentally, if you wink at the C64, it might crap KO'd on you.
And sure enough, a few minutes after plugging in my pride and delight—my last practical C64 breadbox model—IT unsuccessful. Luckily, I had a spare running C64 motherboard, and after troubleshooting that ate up a large portion of the day, I bu swapped the boards and was spinal column up and running.
The Articulated lorry
No Commodore 64 is an island; it needs a nebula of supporting peripherals to cost a truly expedient system. For a monitor, I chose my trusty Commodore 1702, which not simply supports asterid dicot family video input but besides a special S-Video-like chroma/luma stimulation in the back up that guarantees a very graduate tone video display. I own a single cable ready-made for this connection between a C64 and a 1702, and I almost couldn't find IT. But I did.
For storage, I chose the standard Commodore 1541 floppy disk drive. It bum use single- or double-sided 5.25-inch floppies that hold 170 kilobytes per broadside. It maulers to the C64 via a in series interface that can be quite lentissimo, but at the least it was user friendly.
Disk drives could be very pricy in the 1980s, so many C64 users opted for a glower-price cassette taping movement. Such a drive stored and read estimator data from textbook sound cassette tapes. I strung-out up unitary of the more popular models, the Commodore 1530 C2N Datasette tug (shown sitting on top of the stack to a higher place), only alas, I had trouble finding meaningful programs connected taping to use with it (most of my tapes are for the earlier VIC-20).
For game controllers, I rummaged through my collection and found two Commodore VIC-1311 joysticks. More than along that later.
The Software
A computer is only as good as its package, and the Commodore 64 platform suffered no want in this department. Over 10,000 programs were created and oversubscribed for the C64 during its lifespan, and sometimes it feels like I take all of them sitting in a gigantic box Eastern Samoa shown below. This is persona of my Commodore 64 software collection.
One problem is using this software. These disks are old, and, as many folks have realised in recent days, floppy disks don't most recently forever. (I wrote a while about the ramifications of that fact originally this yr.) The magnetic information fades over time, devising them illegible.
Sometimes the disks Doctor of Osteopathy work, but graphics information becomes scrambled, as was the case with the lame Gantlet, seen below:
Over the past decade, C64 fans have created a number of adapters that utilize modern secure digital flash media for data storage. But I wanted to wee-wee this receive as authentic As assertable by using only vintage equipment.
So aside the end of Clarence Day one, I was faced with the aspect of spending my week with an unreliable discount computing device, reading ancient floppies that rarely work. Simply hey—nobody said this was departure to comprise well-fixed.
Next: Day 2, Cruising the Superhighway
Day 2: Cruising the Information Superhighway
Place setting in the lead was fun, and I'm glad you've study this far. Only I know what you're very here for: to see me tweet from a Commodore 64.
How is it symmetrical possible to tweet from a 30-year-old machine?
Tweeting
Well, there are ii ways to set about it. The first, and nigh obvious, method acting is the "vintage" way, which I will describe momentarily. The second is to buy a modern C64-to-ethernet adapter and run Breadbox64, a native Twitter client written for the C64 in 2009 aside Johan Van den Brande.
Since I had decided to stick with vintage hardware and software system, I matte up the latter route would exist cheating. So I went the "simulated ISP" route—the same method I secondhand with the IBM PC 5150 last year. Back in the day, combined secondhand serial ports for everything. If one desired to use information services, one called raised a bigger, more knock-down simple machine with a modem, and that simple machine Federal Reserve info to the C64 through the serial embrasure.
I did the same thing, hooking my C64 to my "virtual ISP" (a semi-modern PC running Linux) through a sequent interface. On the C64 end, I ran ASCII time period copycat software (the same tolerant you'd habituate with a modem).
Hooking the machines together was more complicated than using a single wire. On the C64 stop, I had to use a Omnitronix Rich RS-232 Interface. This Interface connects to the C64's I/O embrasure and converts the signals to allow usage of standard RS-232 serial devices. I attached a null modem series cable to this interface that led to the serial port on the Linux PC.
Erst connected, I had access to the entire Linux system as if I had a "shell account" on a remote ISP.
From there, I could check email, graze the Web, and even transmi tweets. Equally I mentioned in my 5150 piece, this may look like unjust, but this method acting, which involves connecting to a large, more capable machine, is very similar to how indefinite would rich person accessed a larger electronic computer network in the 1980s.
I distinct to kick things off with a tweet from the C64 using a Linux-settled command-melodic phras program titled Twidge, shown happening the screen door below:
And here is how the twirp looked from the Twitter web site, as rendered by an iMac. As you can see, I received both unbelievable and congratulatory responses on Chirrup.
Surfin' the Entanglement, 64 Dash
Next, I decided to try browse the World Wide Web. As with Twitter, I had a couple of ways I could set about information technology. I could utilize modern browsers that C64 diehards have created for the C64, simply what entertaining is that?
Instead, I went the "vintage" ISP route. I loaded Lynx, the famous text edition-based Web web browser, happening the Linux machine. I called up a few websites—or what I think are websites—and watched them unfold like literary spaghetti on the screen. Here is PCWorld.com in 40 columns, text-only:
And here's what Google looks like if you access it from a C64. If you squint the right room, you can scarcely tell any difference from Firefox :-)…
The sites work, albeit not very well. They'd look much better with a break software solvent, but time was a-tickin', and I needed to move on.
Checking Email
What is computer science without checking email? Dutifully, I pixilated up Ache, a popular command-line email customer for Linux. IT did non look good in 40 columns. I knew there were other solutions that would work bettor with 40 columns, merely aside the time I got to email, I was out of shoot a line.
Close: Clarence Shepard Day Jr. 3, Word Processing
Day 3: Word Processing
Along day iii, I decided it was time to write.
I knew right off that this would personify an amusive adventure on a machine that could exhibit only 40 columns of school tex (natively, in schoolbook mode, at least), instead of 80 columns; 80-column text displays, face on high-end business PCs of the day (like the IBM PC), were considered the standard necessary to represent the width of schoolbook on letter-sized, typed paper. (Trivia: The 80-column standard originated American Samoa a reflection of the number of columns connected a Hollerith Hollerith card.)
But first, I needed some software. I combed through my illicit disk file away and pulled out Eastern Samoa many disks as I could that appeared to contain word processing software. I launch three operative disks with three working programs: OmniWriter, Rich Script, and Extremely Script 64.
Omniwriter, a 1984 program published by Frail Engineered Software, felt like the almost intuitive, abundant-to-use, and powerful of the three. Like opposite word processors for 40-column systems, Omniwriter simulates 80 columns of width by simply scrolling the screen approximately a virtual 80-column-wide page A you type. (It's Charles Frederick Worth noting that a a couple of word C.P.U. packages imitation 80 columns on a standard C64 in a high-res graphics mode, but I did not run crossways one during this experiment.)
Easy Script is a simple, bare-bones word processor created by Preciseness Software, Ltd., and published by Commodore in 1982. IT is sol "easy" that it doesn't even include word wrap, and it doesn't guess to simulate a page. I was not impressed.
Finally, I well-tried Super Script 64, a 1985 application also created by Precision Software. As a continuation to Easy Script, it felt similar, but had nicer features including word roll, page number, tabs, and even more that I didn't dig in into very some.
The Keyboard: My attempts at writing on the C64 were thwarted proto connected by the clumsy keyboard layout of the Commodore 64, which I feel is not conducive to word processing. (Cue 30 en garde comments from citizenry who wrote term written document on the thing.) At any given time, you are only one key out from accidentally clearing the screen door, and there is no dedicated backspace of import that kit and boodle the same all told applications.
I will allot you that the Commodore 64's keyboard was very adequate for the social unit's price range, target audience, and the era in which it was designed. As I found in my week of typewriting with it, you can become habitual to the layout, even if it is sort o clumsy for someone WHO is used to the directly-standard IBM Microcomputer 101-winder layout.
Next: Day 4, Video Games
Day 4: Video Games
By the time day four rolled more or less, I was bushed of working. Wasn't the C64 supposed to exist a world-celebrated game program, anyway? It was time for whatever fun.
So I hooked up some joysticks. I mentioned the Commodore VIC-1311 joysticks earlier, and I wish I hadn't. They are terrible. Whoever decided to make the control stick shaft formed like a triangular optical prism was either steep or trying to avoid a patent case. Now roughly 30 years antediluvian, pushing their ancient mushy buttons feels like pushing a solid, immovable piece of plastic.
So I ditched them.
In their put on, I whipped out a Suncom TAC-2—perhaps the superior digital joystick ever created. Its unique ball/dental plate-based contact mechanism makes IT very rugged, so far accurate and responsive. Its two buttons both electrify up to the same contacts, which makes it lefty-friendly.
With the TAC-2 firmly attached to the C64, I was prompt to play. After a a couple of games of Frogger and Wizard of Wor on cartridge, I was left unsatisfied. What games, if some, defined the Commodore 64? I flipped through my cartridge collecting, infra, looking informed name calling.
I happened to have a bunch of nonpirated C64 game disks to a fault—unfortunately, most of them are now unreadable—but I did manage to find and run Summer Games, a digital implementation of the Summer Olympic Games created by EPYX in 1984. I also tried Summer Games II (1984), which lets you combine events from the first game into a immense Olympics-dash contender. Here are the disks:
And here is one of the games squirting on the Commodore 64. Does the Olympic Torch there beat London's?
After that, I cockeyed up one of my personalized favorites, M.U.L.E. (Electronic Arts, 1983), a multiplayer strategy game that involves trading and resource management. Here's how it looked:
Succeeding: Mean solar day 5, Graphics
Day 5: Graphics and Thwarting
On twenty-four hour period pentad, I had planned to tackle graphics-incidental applications. Connected the C64, that for the most part means joystick-based doodling programs, mouse-based clones of MacPaint, and Broderbund's The Print Shop, which allowed users to design and photographic print precious banners, newsletters, and custom-made calendars.
Merely in truth, I worn out most of Day 5 hard to transfer NovaTerm, a nice 80-pillar terminal program, over the serial connection from the Linux Auto to the C64. At 1200 bits per second, each undertake took quite while, and even as I succeeded, I ran out of time.
Earlier in the day, I did get a chance to try a mateless graphics bundle: Scrabble, a joystick-based drawing program free away Omni Software around 1985. This is what I managed to scrabble:
I was aiming for "Sunset, as viewed from the Eiffel Tower in 1892," but it complete up looking more similar lines made by a woodworm.
Conclusion
So what did I learn from my hebdomad-long Commodore 64 adventure? I'd birth to enunciat that, truthfully, I ended my week with less respect for the platform as a indiscriminate-purpose PC than I had before I started.
I've owned a C64 (or ten) for almost two decades now, and I had used them only casually to trifle games now and and so. Using them for anything else is an exercise in frustration, especially when you'atomic number 75 dealings with vintage hardware that was uncertain to begin with.
But I have a great respect for the C64's role as a cultural catalyst for a generation WHO grew up basking in its warm dingy glow. For them, the Commodore 64 did everything they needed: It provided a important stepping-stone to a bigger world of computers, it taught many how to program for the first time, and, for its day, it was a sea wolf gambling automobile.
If you simply take C64 atomic number 3 it was—an entry-level home reckoner that provided immense amusement respect—then it is obvious that some products fulfilled that role better than Commodore's little brown box.
Few technology products have been as influential or important in the lives of millions as the C64.
Despite my troubles using it As a work machine, I am not ashamed to raise a glass to toast its 30th anniversary.
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Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/460354/tweet_from_a_commodore_64_we_do_that_and_more_to_celebrate_the_beloved_pcs_30th_birthday.html
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