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Slack client for Commodore 64

1amstudios.com

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Re: Slack client for Commodore 64

#52

Post by epenn »

esseti wrote: post #48
esseti wrote: post #9

but why? (Pls, don't reply: for the glory of satan)

my question was serious, i don't see why i should get down vote for this. i'm actually curious to understand what's the reason to build this. it may be fun, but once it's built you trow it away. it's like baking a cake and don't eat it.

You don't have to eat the cake to sharpen your baking skills.

Re: Slack client for Commodore 64

#53

Post by jeff_harris »

esseti wrote: post #48
esseti wrote: post #9

but why? (Pls, don't reply: for the glory of satan)

my question was serious, i don't see why i should get down vote for this. i'm actually curious to understand what's the reason to build this. it may be fun, but once it's built you trow it away. it's like baking a cake and don't eat it.

as the author of this project, let me explain...

Ahem....

Well there is no good reason. I guess I was curious to see if something that I use every day, like Slack, could be interacted with through the C64. Figuring out a wire format for a list of channels, then parsing that out into channel names + ids and rendering a scrolling list of channels in 6502 assembly is challenging. Its frustrating. It was fun!

More generally, creating something 'just because' is so rewarding.

Learning, practicing and honing my chosen craft doing something creative is enjoyable. There is always something new to learn and half a dozen projects in my head I want to work on if only I could find the time. Why do some people spend hours painting, carving, or making model ships? Same reason I made this :)

Hope that helps!

Re: Slack client for Commodore 64

#54

Post by jeff_harris »

epenn wrote: post #52
esseti wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my question was serious, i don't see why i should get down vote for this. i'm actually curious to understand what's the reason to build this. it may be fun, but once it's built you trow it away. it's like baking a cake and don't eat it.

You don't have to eat the cake to sharpen your baking skills.

this :)

Re: Slack client for Commodore 64

#55

Post by skissane »

Diederich wrote: post #47
bduerst wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascinating - what was favored to win at the time?

IPX and NetBIOS (which MSFT called NetBUI) were introduced after the C64 came out. I would say DECnet phase IV or IBM's SNA were the biggest contenders, along with X.25.

IPX is a modification of the Xerox Network Systems (XNS). XNS is c. 1977 whereas the Commodore 64 was released in 1982. In the early 1980s, networking was such a young technology there was little commercial value in following standards. Even when you based your product on pre-existing technology (like Novell did), you changed it in incompatible ways.

I think if Commodore had wanted to do a LAN, they probably would have built something proprietary similar to Acorn's Econet, which also ran on 6502 systems.

But, I think the primary focus of Commodore was on the home market, and most people would only buy one microcomputer, and if they had two sharing floppies was sufficient as a LAN. Acorn by contrast was more focused on the education market, where the value of networking was much more obvious, and schools were willing to pay for it.

Re: Slack client for Commodore 64

#56

Post by bonzini »

pedoh wrote: post #33
coldpie wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. We were looking for an internal chat solution for our company. Currently we use IRC, but it would be nice to have an offline mechanism so we don't need to run IRC bouncers or CLI clients on our servers to receive messages when we're not in the office. We considered Slack, but decided it was too risky to host our internal communications on someone else's service. I'm waiting for the day Slack has a huge…

Mattermost might fit the bill. I haven't used it, personally. https://www.mattermost.org/features/

One issue we had with Mattermost is that some authentication modules (e.g. OAuth) are not part of the free core. Rocket Chat does not have this issue, though the mobile app is a bit less polished.

Re: Slack client for Commodore 64

#57

Post by linker3000 »

jeff_harris wrote: post #42
gurgus wrote: post #13

Come on guys... C64 all of the things! Some of the comments here are ridiculously negative or taking away from the fact that Jeff has done something cool here. Good stuff, Jeff! Keep on doing stuff like this and don't listen to the hate/negative comments.

Thanks! It's just a fun project, so of course there are lots of ways to improve it! I found writing 6502 assembly code is strangely comfortable once you get over the initial face-palm moments ;)

What a fun project! Back in the day I wrote a full VT100/VT220 emulator in .asm for the C64 using bitmapped graphics for an 80 column screen.

Re: Slack client for Commodore 64

#58

Post by khedoros1 »

a1k0n wrote: post #41

FWIW you probably don't need a USB serial port, or a RS232 converter at all; you could just pick the TTL serial signals off the commodore port and plug them into the TTL serial port on the Raspberry Pi 23- or 40-pin expansion slot (pins 8, 9, and 10 are TX, ground, and RX.). Remove the tty on /dev/ttyAMA0 from the init config and you can use /dev/ttyAMA0 as your built-in Pi serial port.

The DC voltage supply on the Commodore side looks like 5V, and at a guess, the TTL probably runs at that voltage too. The Pi won't be happy with more than 3.3V on its UART pins, so the USB adapter also fills the purpose of a voltage adapter.
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