Help My c64 caught on fire

80 pointsposted 9 hours ago
by ibobev
(c0de517e.com)

25 Comments

syncsynchalt

7 hours ago

Note to readers: the heavily dithered websafe thumbnails lead to full-color photos when clicked.

0x1ch

5 hours ago

Why is it dithered like this? To save bandwidth? I wasn't on the internet much before 2010, so maybe this is an old technique you don't see anymore.

voxelghost

4 hours ago

Author answered below, but dithering techniques like these were common on old computers like the C64 and others, due to the limited ammount of graphics colors available ( 16 colors on C64 if I remember correctly), plus there were usually limitations on how many colors you could use within one 8x8 block , commonly 2 - 1 foreground , and one background color. C64 had a multicolor mode with 1 background, and 3 forground color. But that was still just 4 colors (out of 16 available ) usuable for each 8x8 character block. However switching to multicolor mode took you from high resolution ( 200x320 px) to low res ( 200x160 px) - and yes thats for the entire screen (25 x 40 chars)

zahlman

5 hours ago

Originally, sort of. But also to work around limitations in GIF (which is palette-based; but see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF#True_color) and because people didn't always have true-colour monitors (or ran the monitor in a different mode due to VRAM restrictions) anyway.

In today's context, more for the aesthetic, presumably.

c0de517e

4 hours ago

Author - yes, it's "aesthetic", albeit not my best work and I might revert that decision at some point. Was inspired by lowtechmagazine but they did a much much better job.

I do care about the blog being snappy and working also on very low-end, vintage hardware though, so that also somewhat achieves that goal.

zzzeek

2 hours ago

it seems obvious for nostalgic reasons

Aldipower

7 hours ago

Just in time I received my brand new Commodore 64 Ultimate directly before Christmas. What a lovely made piece of retro hardware.

gerdesj

5 hours ago

I have an actual original C-64 from around 1986. I got it recapped a few years back and it worked! Now the floppy and tape drives gather dust: it has USB 8)

Oh and I have an original Quickshot II, which still works despite "Daley Thomson's Decathalon".

I'm going to give it to my son in law this Chrimbo - "Attack of the mutant camels" and "Matrix" etc needs new players.

andyjohnson0

6 hours ago

This is very nice, enjoyment-driven, seasonal hacking. Cool.

Brought back happy memories of the much simpler, much less impressive falling snowflakes animation, complete with Silent Night soundtrack, that I laboriously wrote in Basic on my Vic-20 one Christmas back in the 80s.

erickhill

5 hours ago

Didn't need the click-bait title. I would have read it regardless (and did). I wish there had been a PRG or D64 included for the non-programmers. Fun read!

c0de517e

4 hours ago

Author, fwiw, I don't do/care about click-bait, as I never cared about clicks. Since I moved to my bespoke blog system (previously I was on blogspot) I don't even track page views. But I thought it was somewhat funny.

dotancohen

4 hours ago

I think not enough people today have ever seen the message "printer on fire".

rolph

6 hours ago

i thought this was going to involve capacitor plague. rather a retro dive into coding an 8bit digital fireplace.

userbinator

5 hours ago

Definitely a clickbait title. I thought it'd be about those infamous Rifa caps.

c0de517e

4 hours ago

Fwiw, the c64 is pretty robust, if you don't use the original power supplies.

I'm surprised that people find this to be an example of clickbait. If I cared about views, I'd imagine an honest title like - "I turned my c64 into a digital fireplace" - would have probably been more appealing, no?

arbol

6 hours ago

This is particularly awesome cause I can't imagine anyone thinking of making a fake fireplace with a computer screen in the c64 era.

TacticalCoder

6 hours ago

> https://c0de517e.com/026_c64fire/cozy.jpg

That should have been a real CRT monitor to give this picture a true feeling of the 80s!

andyjohnson0

6 hours ago

Simulated 14" portable TV fascia with tuning knob* and mono speaker grille.

*set to channel 36, natch

zahlman

5 hours ago

> set to channel 36, natch

Was that specific to C64? I recall old consoles and VCRs using either channel 3 or 4.

andyjohnson0

4 hours ago

Might be a European thing. I remember that, here in the UK, on my Vic-20 connected to my parent's Bush portable tv, it was channel 36. I believe the C64 was the same.

And sometimes you had to twist/jiggle the aerial lead to get a good connection.

c0de517e

4 hours ago

Eh, if only I had one. I have some relatives living next to me through and I think I remember an old TV in their basement, I might check it out, that's a good idea.