“artisanal, locally sourced, homemade cable”
Excellent- he should apply for oodles of startup money just with that description- bound to get it!
The rest of it is v good too!
A Kiwi chap named Jeff Harris has created a Slack client for the Commodore 64. Harris has no explanation for why he thinks the world needs a Slack client for the Commodore 64, but built one anyway. As he writes, he just felt like it was a good idea to write one. So he did. To do so, he wrote a NodeJS app for the Raspberry Pi …
You say that, but I notice that there is no mention of organic practicea or fair trade agreements.
This makes me wonder if ethhically this ptoject is in the right place.
Anyway I've got to go campaign for rights for house flies. For too long have they suffered at the hands of the white man.
*sparks up doobie and leaves*
The User Port is controlled directly by the MOS 6526 CIA (Complex Interface Adapter), while the video was done on the VIC-II, a separate chip. I don't think the 6526 could halt the CPU, but the VIC-II certainly could (thus the CPU's speed limit, the two normally alternate clock cycles). Perhaps without something like a REU for faster memory transfer, the processing needed to render the video is what's limiting the throughout at the User Port.
Aprotek sold a 2400 baud modem that worked just fine on the C64 without any problems.
Aprotek also sold an RS-232 interface and with that, a US Robotics modem, and a copy of Novaterm64 you could get 4800 baud on a C64. No, it didn't shut off the screen.
And if you had a 128 and a copy of Desterm, you could even get 9600 baud! But you had to have an 80 column screen and put the CPU into Fast Mode (which DOES disable the VIC II) to do it.
I still have my own-built parallel port to RS232 converter for the Oric Atmos and the Oric Atmos and its printer/plotter. It's good for a whole 300baud and had the luxury of a 5V to 12V converter to get the right signal levels to drive an ASR33. The software side of that involves lots of bit tickling and poking values into memory.
If it weren't for PETSCII, a C128 in Fast Mode and with an RS-232 adapter on the User Port and a CGA monitor probably would've made for an interesting dumb terminal. Once upon a time, I direct-connected a C128's 1200bps modem to a PC's modem in order to transfer files between them (was migrating at that point).
That's a Commodore 128. (I know. I had a VIC-20, a C-64, and a C128. Sequentially, not all at once.) Of course the 128 had a C-64 under the hood, but it also had a CP/M machine. Who knows what they were up to, in there out of sight?
It may have a 64 sticker on top, but a REAL 64 didn't have that ledge on the back.
That's a Commodore 128.
You really need to get your facts straightened out. A C128 consisted of both a keyboard and a "PC-like" case, not a single keyboard. And this is most definitely a C64, I know because I own one myself as well. That ribboned back was ideal to put the 5.25" in, especially when messing with multi-floppy games.
Of course this C64 also had a caveat: the SID chip in this one is upgraded. It still has the famous C64 sound, but it's still different. And such I ended up with more C64 machines because I also wanted the old one :)
No, the original C128 was an all-in-one shell. I should know because a C128 was MY first computer, and I remember it extensively (down to the Thomson monitor that at least let me switch between 40- and 80-column mode). The one with the detachable keyboard was the 128D, a later model with a built-in 1571 drive that only saw limited production because it ended up competing with the Amiga.
The computer in the picture is a Commodore 64C, one of the last models that mimicked the 128's shell.
I seem to recall people doing similar with a ZX Spectrum[*] at the Manchester Play expo a few years ago - I think it was either for Twitter or IRC. When all's said and done, you're just using Ye Olde Machine as a bare-bones terminal.
[*] Admittedly, as this was a Sinclair machine, it was probably done with a lot of bodged parts rescued from landfill and was at risk of crashing if there was too much wobbling. We'll have none of that freshly organic artisanal rubbish here!