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Help My c64 caught on fire
- syncsynchalt 11mo agoNote to readers: the heavily dithered websafe thumbnails lead to full-color photos when clicked.
- altairprime 11mo ago(And, once, also HDR.)
- stronglikedan 11mo agoonly most do
- 0x1ch 11mo agoWhy is it dithered like this? To save bandwidth? I wasn't on the internet much before 2010, so maybe this is an old technique you don't see anymore.
- zahlman 11mo agoOriginally, sort of. But also to work around limitations in GIF (which is palette-based; but see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF#True_color https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF#True_color) and because people didn't always have true-colour monitors (or ran the monitor in a different mode due to VRAM restrictions) anyway. In today's context, more for the aesthetic, presumably.
- c0de517e 11mo agoAuthor - yes, it's "aesthetic", albeit not my best work and I might revert that decision at some point. Was inspired by lowtechmagazine but they did a much much better job. I do care about the blog being snappy and working also on very low-end, vintage hardware though, so that also somewhat achieves that goal.
- joshuahaglund 11mo agoI like the aesthetic choice
- voxelghost 11mo agoAuthor answered below, but dithering techniques like these were common on old computers like the C64 and others, due to the limited ammount of graphics colors available ( 16 colors on C64 if I remember correctly), plus there were usually limitations on how many colors you could use within one 8x8 block , commonly 2 - 1 foreground , and one background color. C64 had a multicolor mode with 1 background, and 3 forground color. But that was still just 4 colors (out of 16 available ) usuable for each 8x8 character block. However switching to multicolor mode took you from high resolution ( 200x320 px) to low res ( 200x160 px) - and yes thats for the entire screen (25 x 40 chars)
- zzzeek 11mo agoit seems obvious for nostalgic reasons
- 0x1ch 11mo agoI'm in my early twenties. I only really associate this dithering with comic books, not C64s (much before my time, i've seen one in a tech museum lol)
- syncsynchalt 11mo agoI think the author did it for C64 reasons, but for other reasons it was a vibe in 1995: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_colors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_colors
- Aldipower 11mo agoJust in time I received my brand new Commodore 64 Ultimate directly before Christmas. What a lovely made piece of retro hardware.
- gerdesj 11mo agoI have an actual original C-64 from around 1986. I got it recapped a few years back and it worked! Now the floppy and tape drives gather dust: it has USB 8) Oh and I have an original Quickshot II, which still works despite "Daley Thomson's Decathalon". I'm going to give it to my son in law this Chrimbo - "Attack of the mutant camels" and "Matrix" etc needs new players.
- mapontosevenths 11mo agoI'm hoping mine shows up in time for me to get in a little Maniac Mansion. It sounds so good on a real SID chip!
- TacticalCoder 11mo ago> https://c0de517e.com/026_c64fire/cozy.jpg https://c0de517e.com/026_c64fire/cozy.jpg That should have been a real CRT monitor to give this picture a true feeling of the 80s!
- andyjohnson0 11mo agoSimulated 14" portable TV fascia with tuning knob* and mono speaker grille. *set to channel 36, natch
- zahlman 11mo ago> set to channel 36, natch Was that specific to C64? I recall old consoles and VCRs using either channel 3 or 4.
- andyjohnson0 11mo agoMight be a European thing. I remember that, here in the UK, on my Vic-20 connected to my parent's Bush portable tv, it was channel 36. I believe the C64 was the same. And sometimes you had to twist/jiggle the aerial lead to get a good connection.
- c0de517e 11mo agoEh, if only I had one. I have some relatives living next to me through and I think I remember an old TV in their basement, I might check it out, that's a good idea.
- rolph 11mo agoi thought this was going to involve capacitor plague. rather a retro dive into coding an 8bit digital fireplace.
- userbinator 11mo agoDefinitely a clickbait title. I thought it'd be about those infamous Rifa caps.
- c0de517e 11mo agoFwiw, the c64 is pretty robust, if you don't use the original power supplies. I'm surprised that people find this to be an example of clickbait. If I cared about views, I'd imagine an honest title like - "I turned my c64 into a digital fireplace" - would have probably been more appealing, no?
- sokoloff 11mo agoYou’re surprised that people find a title of “Help! My c64 caught on fire!” to be clickbait in a case where your c64 did not catch on fire and you don’t need help?! It’s an interesting article, but the title is a textbook example of clickbait and I’m surprised that you’re surprised. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clickbait https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clickbait
- saidnooneever 11mo agoi understand them but considering the project and its nature its a punny / good way of clickbait :D. lovely lil fireplace btw!
- c0de517e 11mo agothanks
- snvzz 11mo agoI recapped a C64C I bought second hand recently, using premium Japanese 105C capacitors off the shelf on akihabara, minus the huge axial one I ordered a modern, extremely durable replacement for. I tested every cap I removed, all of them nichicons from the mid 80s. They all measured to spec. So it was kinda pointless at the end. Sure, it is going to be good for a few more decades, alongside the 1571 Ultimate II-L. (yes, I replaced the original PSU. I bought separate modern, safe 9vac and 5vdc PSUs and an adapter to join them into the C64 power connector)
- arbol 11mo agoThis is particularly awesome cause I can't imagine anyone thinking of making a fake fireplace with a computer screen in the c64 era.
- andyjohnson0 11mo agoThis is very nice, enjoyment-driven, seasonal hacking. Cool. Brought back happy memories of the much simpler, much less impressive falling snowflakes animation, complete with Silent Night soundtrack, that I laboriously wrote in Basic on my Vic-20 one Christmas back in the 80s.
- erickhill 11mo agoDidn't need the click-bait title. I would have read it regardless (and did). I wish there had been a PRG or D64 included for the non-programmers. Fun read!
- c0de517e 11mo agoAuthor, fwiw, I don't do/care about click-bait, as I never cared about clicks. Since I moved to my bespoke blog system (previously I was on blogspot) I don't even track page views. But I thought it was somewhat funny.
- dotancohen 11mo agoI think not enough people today have ever seen the message "printer on fire".
- Minor49er 11mo agoNot GP, but I was expecting to read about a C64 on fire and was disappointed when it was just a post about an unoptimized fire demo
- c0de517e 11mo agoI imagined that there would be better ones made by real c64 democoders, but I can include a .prg. Also, if you make a C project in the web-based IDE I linked, and copy-paste the last .c file, it will compile it, run it in an emulator, and give an option to download the compiled .prg from there too
- jumbledoor 11mo ago[dead]
- moss47 11mo agoMade me think of the IT Crowd screensaver: https://youtu.be/KH_0uybs93I https://youtu.be/KH_0uybs93I Which was a result of: https://youtu.be/1EBfxjSFAxQ https://youtu.be/1EBfxjSFAxQ
- omoikane 11mo agoThis looks like the classic fire effect: generate rising flames by averaging pixels below each output pixel, and randomize the last row. I remember this effect because there was a competition[1] where every entry was a fire effect in 256 bytes, and I was amazed at the simplicity of the core algorithm. [1] https://www.pouet.net/party.php?which=1791&when=1996 https://www.pouet.net/party.php?which=1791&when=1996
- vintermann 11mo agoSpoiler: nah, he just coded a fire effect on his c64. There was apparently a demo party a while back where a Tiki 100 actually caught fire.
- PunchyHamster 11mo agoWhy would you put pics with less colors in them than c64 ? They are not even small?! (yes I now I can waste time to click one to see proper one)
- c0de517e 11mo agoIt's just how I decided to generate the previews for my blog in general. Not my best idea, but I don't hate it enough yet to change it.
- qinchencq 11mo agoA mechanical keyboard in c64 design would be lovely.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]