Slack client for Commodore 64

[gurgus]

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.

[jeff_harris]

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 ;)

[poorman]

I could really use this seeing as... https://twitter.com/NickPoorman/status/737647940026634240

[laumars]

I connect to Slack from my favourite IRC client (Irssi) after getting fed up with the memory that the official client used. It's not as retro-cool as this C64 port but it fits my command line orientated workflow better than the Electron app did and allows me to build my own client-side plugins in Perl.

[amiga-workbench]

I really am sick to death of applications built ontop of Electron Shell et al, what an utter waste.

[maccard]

Yep I put a ticket in for something simialr(grows to about 2GB every 2 days or so), and was told it's expected behaviour!!

[jyriand]

And I thought that my 700MB was bad.

[joshfriend]

Wow, you really need to be in less slack teams...

[qwertyuiop924]

C'mon. Implement PPP between the C64 and a Pi, and then do the rest on the C64 itself.

[flippyhead]

> I connected the Userport to a Raspberry Pi with a artisanal, locally sourced, homemade cable with the UserPort connector on one end

The writing in the blog post is nearly as awesome as the project itself.

[a1k0n]

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.

[khedoros1]

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.

[jeff_harris]

Thanks, yeah, I will try this - I followed a design for a c64-pc cable without considering that the Pi probably had serial port pins.

[joeblau]

Awesome. It'e even native... not a hybrid web app built in Electron.

[kstrauser]

I think that's brilliant. Well done, Jeff! Sure, it's probably not useful. Neither is the painting on my wall, but I'm glad someone made it!

[JonnieCache]

See also: twitch.tv chat running on a SNES, injected via an ACE exploit in pokemon red.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/01/pokemon-plays-twitch-h...

[erickhill]

Does it have to be used with a Raspberry Pi? If you have a Wifi Modem for C64, would the Slack client still work?

[jeff_harris]

You would need to replace the rs232 code with code to talk to the Wifi modem. You would need to deal with websocket handling and JSON parsing.

Doable, for sure, but would be significant work (depending on the richness of the API provided by wifi modem)

[Chenzo11]

Virtual hi5! Vic-20 and C64 were my first intros to computers

[PhasmaFelis]

I've always loved reading about weird C64 hacks, but this is the first one that has me seriously considering digging the old 64 out of the basement.

[LeoPanthera]

How am I going to display emojis on my Commodore 64?

[localhost]

Well, the C64 screen resolution is 320 x 200, so you should be able to do some awesome full screen emoji :)

[GFK_of_xmaspast]

Write into the character image data starting at $D000.

[LukasRos]

This is an awesome showcase for how all kinds of technology can be adapted and connected in new, unforeseen ways. Very inspiring, cool DIY project!

[jedimastert]

Does the C64 have TCP/IP capabilities?

[Diederich]

The original version? Not even close. (:

TCP/IP was a thing when the C64 came out, but it was one of many competing networking standards, and it wasn't even the favorite to win.

[retSava]

In a way, oh yeah :) https://github.com/contiki-os/contiki/tree/master/platform/c...

[Annatar]

No, but there is RR-Net, http://wiki.icomp.de/wiki/RR-Net/, Turbo Chameleon+, http://www.vesalia.de/e_chameleon.htm, and 64NIC+: http://www.go4retro.com/products/64nic/.

Thanks to the forethought of the Commodore's engineers who envisioned the Commodore64 as the center of the smart-connected home, or sound studio, or industrial controller, lots of ultramodern hardware has been designed for it. Hardware that wasn't even science fiction when the C=64 came out. And all because C=64 is infinitely programmable, with his user and expansion ports. Unbelievably versatile computer, even by today's standards.

[white-flame]

It has (pretty bad) RS232 routines in ROM, which bit-bang across some of its GPIOs (of which there are 10 or so on the User Port).

Other than that, it has its serial peripheral bus, used mostly for printers & disk drives. There were also device sharing & custom networking hubs which sit on that bus.

The ROMs supported a notion of general byte streams and could do simple redirection. It had that stream support for tape, keyboard, screen, RS232, and "device on the serial bus" built-in. Obviously, newer 3rd party hardware can support Wifi/Ethernet in various forms, and software can drive IP over existing links (like SLIP over RS232 adapters).

Oh, it also had a few hardware serial shift lines intended for the serial peripheral bus, but those never got used for that purpose (until the C128) and mostly sit unused.

[robodale]

As a C64 owner/user from back in the day...this is fucking awesome. Kudos to the creator.

[darklajid]

Eagerly waiting for the Microsoft Teams port..

Because this company here tries very hard to find ways to rely on every Microsoft product in existence and deprecated the (then 3 weeks old) Slack server as soon as Microsoft Teams was announced.

[gravypod]

Why not just use the raspberry pi's UART and the C64's com port?

[khedoros1]

I think you'd still need a level shifter to go between the C64's 5V logic and the Pi's 3.3V logic.

[coin]

Complete with Gateway "2000" monitor

[phyushin]

This is great

[giacomolaw]

I love it!