Nyquist at 20:36, 17 May 2011

2011-05-17T20:36:29Z

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BRINGING THE C64 ONLINE BY ROBBY
BRINGING THE C64 ONLINE BY ROBBY
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DAY 1
DAY 1

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I finally, finally found a Retro Replay
cartridge with an RR-net expansion
board! I'll now be able to bring my
trusty old C64 (it will be the SX-64
actually) online and see if I can send
tweets from that good ol' machine from
the 80's.

Hang on there, you're probably thinking:
"What's all this RR-stuff?" Well, in
short, the Retro Replay is a clone
of the Action Relply cardridge, but
enhanced with some 21st century goodies.
For instance, it extends into the
RR-Net board which (and this is the
really cool part) brings an ethernet
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port to your C64, allowing your home
computer to be hooked up in your LAN and
even take it one step further, to the
internet.

The search for these cards wasn't easy
as they're out of production by the
company Vesalia, which replaced the
boards by the Chameleon board, which is
also... sold out. Their site mentions
that they're taking pre-orders for the
board, but no date is set. So the only
way to get a hold of them is on the
internet. It's a no-brainer that
collectors and hobbyists don't put these
online all that often and when they do,
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be sure to spend some $$$. Nevertheless,
for some reason, i got very lucky on an
eBay-auction and picked up the boards
for little over € 50,00. Talk about a
deal, as the RR-net board itself
normally comes in at $ 50,00!

Today, I got my boards delivered and a
first check reveals they're in perfect
working condition. So, now it's download
time as the tools I need will be Contiki
(an operating system that offers many
features in very small space: a TCP/IP
stack, a web browser, a webserver, a
VNC-client and of course a graphical
user interface) and Breadbox64
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(a twitter client for the C64/128 which
allows you to tweet from a real C64 and
even show your friends timeline). To
transfer the files I downloaded
(D64-format) it to my SX-64, I use the
C64TPC box, which is a small piece of
hardware that connects your C64's serial
port with a serial port on your PC.
With the complementary software, it
becomes easy to transfer D64-files from
your PC to a C64 floppy-disk.

So, with the hardware ready to go, the
software downloaded from the web, I'm
ready to start the big experiment. Next
steps, getting it all hooked up this
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weekend, so stay tuned for the next
parts in the "Bringing the C64 online!"

=>
=>

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DAY 2
DAY 2

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Friday evening 20h30, finally getting
ready to hook my Commodore on the net
and start sending "tweets" from that
classic of the 80s. I connect the C64TPC
to the serial port of a PC, connect it
to the serial port of the SX-64, jam in
the Retro Replay cartridge with the
RR-Net card attached to it in the
cartridge slot and finally hook the card
with a UTP-cable in the back of my
router: it's official, i'm ready to
rock!

With the downloaded D64-image of
Breadbox64 attached to a virtual drive
9, I type in <LOAD"*",9,1> and wait for
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the program to load. A "bleep" from the
PC signals there's something wrong...
Ah, I spot it immediately, it's the vir-
tual drive that got disconnected since
it can't cope with the turboloader from
the Retro Replay. No problem here, the
turboloader is quickly disabled and I
try again. Now loading goes smoothly
and actually quite fast (as the C64TPC
has its own sort of fastloader), so the
131 block take less than 30 seconds.
This is it... I type in "RUN" and...
nothing... just a READY-prompt.

Is maybe the D64-image faulty? I test
it with the CCS64 emulator and here the
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program boots up nicely. I do spot that
once loaded and running, the Breadbox64
application is accessing the drive on
the emulator (the files IP.CFG and a
couple of Contiki ETH-files). Could it
be that the program is somehow
configured to load these files from
drive 8, regardless of the fact that
it's loaded from another drive?

Let's try it again I say to myself, and
I load up the program again and indeed,
I so see the application trying to
access the drive of the SX-64. This
should be a breeze to fix, as I just
need to copy the IP.CFG-file and the
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ETH-files from the virtual drive 9 to
the SX-64 drive. I load the files one
by one (they're marked as PRG-formats so
this should theoretically be possible)
and after each load save them to drive
8, the drive of the SX. Loading the
application again I see it's now
successfully accessing the drive but
still, I am greeted with the READY-
prompt, and not with the Breadbox64
screen... what is wrong? Maybe
I also need to load the application
itself from the SX-drive, so after
loading and saving it to disk, i go
through the process again, but now
loading everything from my SX-64
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directly. Unfortunately, the same
result.

To exclude any issues with the SX-64, I
try the same process from a C64C and a
classic C64 breadbox with a 1541-drive
attached. Both had the same result as
the SX-64.

I decide to check if Contiki with the
built-in webbrowser and webserver run (I
downloaded the D64-images from
cbm8bit.com). I realize that I also
would like to run these disks directly
from the SX-64, as otherwise I'll
probably run into the same issues I had
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with the diskaccess and the virtual
drive on the C64TPC, so I first load up
"FastHack'em" to help me with the
copying of the diskimage to a real disk
(some files on the Contiki image are
of the type "USR", and you cannot simply
load and save these like "PRG" types).
I got a bit of a cold shower as none
of the tools worked, not even tried
and tested applications such as "turbo
nibbler". All of them, as soon as I
stared the disk copy routines, made
the C64TPC virtual drives disconnect.
Browsing some of the forums on the web,
I found out that disk copy with the
C64TPC is quite impossible... a bit of
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setback!

The upside of this however, was that I
noticed that both the CFG-files and
ETH-files on the Contiki image were of
the type "USR", and the ones on the
Breadbox64 image were "PRG". Ok, I know
the application ran on the emulator, but
maybe the emulator is less picky when it
comes to these file types in comparison
with the 1541. With the D64 editor, I
decided to change the file types of the
CFG- and ETH-files to "USR", commit the
changes to the image and load the image
again on the C64TPC. Hang on there, I
still need to copy these files to the
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actual disk on the SX-64 but wasn't this
impossible with the C64TPC (remember,
you can't load and save these files and
disk copy tools don't work...)

Damn!

Maybe, just maybe, I need to set the
IP.CFG file to the proper network
address etc. before the application will
load (I had my doubts, as it ran on the
emulater), but it was already after
midnight and I was getting tired. So, I
made a config-file, renamed it to IP.CFG
and with the D64 editor added it to the
Breadbox64 image... again, trying all
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of the above, it didn't run... I decide
to send a quick mail to Johan Van de
Brande (the creator of the Breadbox64
application) to see if he's come across
this issue before and decide to call it
a day (or night rather).

Saturday morning 11h00, received a reply
from Johan. He was not familiar with
this issue but pointed out that
Breadbox64 is pending a major update as
Twitter.com changed its authentication
mechanism from basic access
authentication to OAuth. Aarrrgh!

Nevertheless, I first need to get the
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application running before I can even
try to log-on to Twitter.com, so of I go
for another attempt at some other disk
copy tools to get the image of the
D64-file transferred to disk, as my
intuition tells me it has something to
do with the PRG vs. USR file type
setting. A couple of hours later, and a
few utilities later, i'm still left with
the same result... it doesn't work... I
close up for the day as we're off to the
city and i'm out of ideas.

Sunday afternoon, 16h00, have an idea!
If the disk copy tools fail to copy the
image, perhaps I can copy the file one
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by one by using the GEOS Operating
System! I download an image, load it
into a virtual drive with the C64TPC
connected to the serial port of the
SX-64, load it, run it... and...
nooooooooooooo it's trying to access
files on the drive as well and that's
not the strong point of the C64TPC...
So in order to be able to copy the files
I first need to be able to disk copy the
GEOS D64-image on a disk, but that's
just what I was trying to avoide... it
seems i'm stuck between a rock and a
hard place on this one...

The only thing i can think of to get the
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Breadbox64 files from PC (and GEOS or
whatever image for that matter)
transferred on a real disk (including
those USR files) is by using a
serial/parallel cable like the XA1541
and an application like Star Commander..
I went of to buy one of those cables on
eBay for ö 15,00. so hopefully the cable
will be here before next weekend so we
can continue the big experiment!

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DAY 3
DAY 3

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About a month ago, I attempted to bring
my commodore SX-64 online. The goal was
to "tweet" from this vintage machine
from the 80's using the Breadbox64
Application. As you could read from the
report, things didn't really run as
smoothly as i wanted...

First there were the transfer issues
of getting the D64-images to load from
the SX-64 with the C64TPC hardware, so
I ended up copying the D64-images with
the TPC to a real disk on the SX-64 but
not even this seemed to be working as
the Breadbox application would not run
properly. Neither did the Contiki
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software so in the end, I decided to
purchase serial/parallel cable like the
XA1541 and put my hopes on this as a
means to transfer the files and get them
to run properly.

Next to that, I learned from Johan Van
de Brande (the creator of the Breadbox64
application) that Breadbox64 is pending
a major update as Twitter.com changed
its authentication mechanism from basic
access authentication to OAuth, so
sending tweets from the SX-64 would be
next to impossible. but, there would
still be the ability with the Contiki
software to browse the web and even run
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a webserver on the SX-64. So, the goal
would be then to see if we could get
this up and running...

About 2 weeks ago, I received a package
containing a professionally mounted
XA1541. I can strongly recommend this
Seller on eBay as the quality of the
product is really top-notch! Now, today,
I had some spare time in the evening to
put the new strategy to the test. I
connected the XA1541 to a standard
Commodore serial cable and hooked it up
to the parallel port of a PC on one end,
and the serial port of a 1541 drive on
the other end. Using the
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opencbm/cbmwin4win together with the
user interface guicbm4win configuring
the ports was a breeze and in less than
5 minutes time I was transferring the
D64-files I had generated a couple of
weeks before for Contiki from the PC to
the floppy in the 1541.

Whilst I was copying the files, I hooked
up the Commodore SX-64 to the internet
with the Retro Replay cartridge with the
RR-Net card and then when the last disk
was copied, loaded the webserver
application and... it worked! On my
laptop, I typed in the IP-address I had
assigned in the CFG-file for the SX-64
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and sure enough, I could see the webpage
appear before my eyes and at the same
time see the logfile scroll on the
screen of the SX-64. I did it, the
SX-64 was running as a webserver!

Next up, I loaded the webbrowser to see
if I could really browse the web. The
webserver I just tested was still in my
own LAN, so the SX-64 was not yet on the
world wide web, but this test would
bring this 8-bit machine onto the 21th
century communication highway: the
internet.

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To make browsing a bit easier, I hooked
up my Commodore 1351 mouse and thanks to
the Retro Replay's fastloader, a few
seconds later, I could type in the first
URL. I typed in the address of the
MOS-site and pressed enter and waited
for a few seconds while i saw the
machine resolving the DNS-address,
getting the page and... showing it onto
the screen! I could see my website on my
SX-64! Browsing the site did not have
the same speed as you're used to on
today's computers, but I could navigate
to every single page of my site and read
all the articles! A few other
sites were browsed as well such as
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www.oldgoldtech.com (no better way to
go to this great site on vintage
technology than with a vintage machine).
It all really worked!

So, there, I did it! I managed to bring
my SX-64 online as a webserver and also
used it to browse the web. I'm a happy
Commodore geek!

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DAY 4
DAY 4

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Back in October, I was able to bring my
Commodore SX-64 online by setting it up
as a webserver and also as a webbrowser,
surfing the web. All this was done, by
using the 2.4 build of the Contiki
software, allowing older systems, like
the Commodore, to interact on the world
wide web. The only thing i couldn't do,
was send tweets using the included
Breadbox64 twitter client, as it
utilizes basic authentication and
Twitter only accepts OAuth.

Last week though, I read a message that
a new build of the Contiki software was
out (2.5 rc1), so naturally I download
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it (hoping there would be an update for
the Breadbox64 application), moved the
D64-files to a couple of 5,25" floppies
and started up my SX-64, equipped with
the Retro Replay cartridge and the
RR-Net card.

The Contiki software has undergone
several updates mostly in the backend,
but some updates are visible at the
front and are a real improvement. The
webbrowser for instance, now uses a
black-and-white color scheme, which
provides much more contrast and works a
whole lot better than the previous blue
interface.
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The mailclient, working along the same
color schemes, is fast but unfortunately
still some issues remain. You need to
replace the "ü" in the recipient's
mailaddress with the "Shift-*" (it
will be translated into "ü" by the
application). Also, it cannot cope with
SMTP-servers requiring authentication
(if it can, please let me know as I
wasn't able to access one of my secured
SMTP-servers). For all other SMTP-
servers, it works like a charm!

Now, for me the most interesting
part was going to be tested... would the

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Breadbox64 Twitter client work this time
around? Loading the program, I noticed
that on the welcome screen, not just
Johan Van den Brander's name was listed
as the author, but also Oliver Schmidt.
It further mentioned that now you would
need a SuperTweet.net accounte... OK,
what's all this then... well, basically,
the SuperTweet.net API provides a means
to take advantage of Twitter's OAuth
authentication technology without the
cost and complexity of OAuth in simple
tweeting applications like this one
for the Commodore. All you need to do is
sign-in with OAuth to the SuperTweet.net
site, where you create a password for
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your applications to use with the
SuperTweet.net API when they want
to tweet. This password is used
when logging on to the Breadbox64
application. Apparantly, Oliver and
Johan changed the loginprocedure of
Breadbox64, using basic authentication,
to sign-in to http://api..supertweet.net
instead of twitter.com and using it
effectively as an OAuth proxy.
Pretty cool and i'm happy to say, I
launched my first tweet from my SX-64 =)

Note: This article was take from the
excelent MOS6502 blog (www.mos6502.com)
Thx Robby for sharing it with us... NYQ
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DT 91 17 - Revision history

Nyquist at 20:36, 17 May 2011