DT 91 17
From C64 Diskmag Wiki
BRINGING THE C64 ONLINE BY ROBBY
BRINGING THE C64 ONLINE BY ROBBY
DAY 1
DAY 1
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
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,
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
(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
weekend, so stay tuned for the next
parts in the "Bringing the C64 online!"
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DAY 2
DAY 2
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
