4 ms·

I had a Commodore 64 with GEOS as a kid. It always amazes me what you can do without umpteen gazillioplex levels of abstraction.

by api 12y ago

vidarh 12y ago
Including surfing the web: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/classics-rock/surf-the-web-on-your-commodore-64/ http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/classics-rock/surf-the-web-... And some people have run web servers on C64's too. Contiki OS runs on C64 and provides a full TCP/IP stack for the C64 as well as a simple browser: http://www.contiki-os.org/ http://www.contiki-os.org/ (This site will apparently create a customized image: http://contiki.cbm8bit.com/ http://contiki.cbm8bit.com/)
- boomlinde 12y ago
  There used to be a quite persistent website hosted from a C64 running Contiki. The pages were probably cached in RAM, but I still like to imagine that a beige 1541 disk drive spun up every time someone made a request.
  - nkozyra 12y ago
    Or one of those weird cassette systems that I vaguely remember struggling with.
    - vidarh 12y ago
      The thing preventing that is that the C64 "Datasette" couldn't trigger play/rewind/fast forward from software, so it'd require it to show a prompt to the operator for each file it needed to load... Someone should hack together an interface - the C64 has usable extra IO pins on the cartridge port that surely should be possible to hook up to them. From a very cursory look at a diagram, it might actually be possible (don't know about safe) to hook the input that normally comes from the play/rewind etc. switch straight to suitable pins on the user port (or you may fry something, but the C64 is remarkably resilient to crazy people like me soldering stuff straight onto the PCB without knowing quite what we're doing, or replacing IC's with "mostly the same but not 100% compatible chips" just to see what would happen... it's a wonder I never broken my C64's)
      - LeoPanthera 12y ago
        Perhaps you could use a continuous loop of tape and just wait for the page you want to come around. A bit like how teletext broadcasts work.
        vidarh 12y ago
        Serve up a "Please wait, your page will load in 10 minutes" interstitial...

I had a Commodore 64 with GEOS as a kid. It always amazes me what you can do without umpteen gazillioplex levels of abstraction.

by api 12y ago

I had a Commodore 64 with GEOS as a kid. It always amazes me what you can do without umpteen gazillioplex levels of abstraction.

vidarh 12y ago

Including surfing the web: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/classics-rock/surf-the-web-on-your-commodore-64/ http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/classics-rock/surf-the-web-... And some people have run web servers on C64's too. Contiki OS runs on C64 and provides a full TCP/IP stack for the C64 as well as a simple browser: http://www.contiki-os.org/ http://www.contiki-os.org/ (This site will apparently create a customized image: http://contiki.cbm8bit.com/ http://contiki.cbm8bit.com/)

boomlinde 12y ago
There used to be a quite persistent website hosted from a C64 running Contiki. The pages were probably cached in RAM, but I still like to imagine that a beige 1541 disk drive spun up every time someone made a request.
- nkozyra 12y ago
  Or one of those weird cassette systems that I vaguely remember struggling with.
  - vidarh 12y ago
    The thing preventing that is that the C64 "Datasette" couldn't trigger play/rewind/fast forward from software, so it'd require it to show a prompt to the operator for each file it needed to load... Someone should hack together an interface - the C64 has usable extra IO pins on the cartridge port that surely should be possible to hook up to them. From a very cursory look at a diagram, it might actually be possible (don't know about safe) to hook the input that normally comes from the play/rewind etc. switch straight to suitable pins on the user port (or you may fry something, but the C64 is remarkably resilient to crazy people like me soldering stuff straight onto the PCB without knowing quite what we're doing, or replacing IC's with "mostly the same but not 100% compatible chips" just to see what would happen... it's a wonder I never broken my C64's)
    - LeoPanthera 12y ago
      Perhaps you could use a continuous loop of tape and just wait for the page you want to come around. A bit like how teletext broadcasts work.
      - vidarh 12y ago
        Serve up a "Please wait, your page will load in 10 minutes" interstitial...