Tweet with a VIC

[folkoh]

Hello everyone,

...now that it is possible to Twitter with a VIC20 - why not having a Denial Twitter account?

Video of 1st VIC Tweet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52seld-P ... re=related

Website (developers):

http://www.tweetver.com/#

The developers aim to create Twitter applications for all kind of home computers - but they started with the VIC, a very good and honorable decision, I say. Source code should available next week

Greetings,

Folko

[Gabriel Angelos]

If I'm seeing that video right, the VIC-20 is connected through a VIC-1011A RS-232 adapter to another computer which is actually talking to twitter. It would seem the VIC is just acting as a serial terminal... which makes an effective demonstration, but isn't that ground breaking at all.

[Schema]

I attended this event. The original thread (which unfortunately got derailed) is here. My photos are on page 2.

[Schema]

If I'm seeing that video right, the VIC-20 is connected through a VIC-1011A RS-232 adapter to another computer which is actually talking to twitter. It would seem the VIC is just acting as a serial terminal... which makes an effective demonstration, but isn't that ground breaking at all.

I posted some ideas on how it could be done "natively" on the VIC in this thread.

[Gabriel Angelos]

Your post about something along the lines of a 64NIC+ or an RR-Net implementation for the VIC is what I was expecting before I watched the video. It would be great to see something like that be developed. I know it's a lot of hard work to bring something like that together. That why I was disappointed seeing the VIC act as a serial terminal. What I read hyped it to be a great achievement, but watching the video it's a disappointment because the VIC itself hadn't really been extended. It was just doing what it could do 30 years ago with another machine doing the heavy lifting in the background.

As a similar example (taking this to it's logical conclusion), hooking a VIC up through tty to a linux box and saying the VIC could now run linux because you piped a bash shell back to the VIC for I/O is very different from actually implementing *nix on a VIC. I know they were trying to do a media event, but their claims just seemed out of line with what they demoed.

I read the other thread and it sounded like an open source release of the server and clients were imminent. Did anything ever come of that?

[folkoh]

...didn't realize that there was a thread about this already and that it is not the VIC actually tweeting here. But one has to admit that they did everything to make the crowd believe that this is not a VIC terminal but a real implementation of a twitter client on the VIC. Too bad.

If it's not a tweet directly from the VIC - I don't need that. Using VIC as a terminal is abusing this wondeful machine and underestimating it's capabilities. The VIC shall never be underestimated, they should make their homework and work on a real client!

Cheers,

Folko

[Luzur]

so, its basically a hoax?

[Ghislain]

Before the RR-net became the defacto standard for networking on a Commodore 64, many people would connect the C64 as a terminal to use a PC's internet connection. I thought that this was a bit cumbersome myself, and I did not connect my C64 to the 'net until I bought an MMC Replay + RRnet cartridge. I actually use a wireless bridge so that effectively, my C64 connects wirelessly, but thanks to external hardware.

With the lack of an RRnet-like cartridge for the VIC-20, I suppose that using a PC as the external device is a necessary evil in this case. It would be nice one day if we could find a way to compile the Contiki OS to a fully maxed expanded VIC-20 (32K + 3K). But with the lack of native VIC-20 networking hardware (aside from a modem), some feel that just using a PC as an internet device is a form of cheating.

I personally don't feel that it's cheating, an external PC to connect to the 'net is no different than using an RRnet. It's just that the latter is a far more elegant way to do it. With an external PC, you have to boot it and start the software.

edit: Schema posted this picture of how tweetver connects to a PC:



My wireless bridge + RRnet on the C64 takes up less space. On top of that, you need an old-style PC tower that still has an RS232 or LPT port nearby. If there is ever an RRnet-like cartridge that gets made for the VIC-20, I'll definitely be the first to buy it.

It's fairly evident that this is a nullmodem that does basic receive/transmission of data. Sydbolton received a bit of backlash and said the following in response:

In response to those saying this is "cheating" - I submit that I never once claimed this was a native TCP IP situation on the VIC. I used a small PC "box". To say it's cheating to communicate would be like saying any wireless device that goes through a router is cheating since a router is essentially a computer (usually) running Linux. If I put that code into a box that was connected directly to the VIC nobody would say anything but alas.

It might be a bit cooler if IP65 (or something like it) was ported to the VIC-20. On the plus side, it did garner publicity for the VIC-20.