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Commodore_Free_Issue_33R1_2009_Commodore_Computer_Club.d64
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2023-02-26
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*************************************
Interview with Johan van den Brande
Producer of the Twitter64 Application
*************************************
Commodore Free.
Please introduce yourself to our
readers
Johan van den Brande.
Hi, I'm Johan van den Brande, 37
years old and father of two children.
I live and work in Belgium. My
profession is software engineering,
although I'm an electronics engineer
by education. One of my hobbies is
tinkering with the C64, which I have
been using since I was 16 years old.
CF. Was the Commodore 64 your first
computer
JVDB. No, it was not my first
computer. At the age of 12 I received
a ColecoVision video game console.
Although not a real computer that you
could program, you could expand it to
a full computer; that expansion was
called the Adam. It came bundled with
a printer as well, which made more
noise then a gun, and had a digital
tape deck. I must have been 13 years
old when I bought the Adam expansion.
The strange thing is that the shop
owner showed me a C64 as well, but
the Adam expansion was priced at a
bargain and had 80K of RAM, and a C64
only 64K. So in all my naivety I
choose the Adam...
CF. Can you tell our readers firstly
"what is twitter"; some reader may be
wondering what twitter is all about
JVDB. Twitter is a social micro
blogging site where people can say
what they are doing and other people
can subscribe to that. So when I
would post a status, all the people
that follow me get this message. The
crazy thing is that the length of one
message is limited to 140 characters,
just as with the SMS service. Some
people just say what day to day
things they are doing, but others
give out rather nice bites of news.
Another thing you see is that twitter
is used for automated systems that
twitter there status. As an example,
there is this crazy botanicals
project http://www.botanicalls.com
where pot plants can twitter if they
are thirsty. Another example would be
the tweet-a-watt system, that sends
out your electrical power consumption
via twitter
http://www.ladyada.net/make/
tweetawatt/ personally, these were
the projectsthat got me interested in
twitter.
CF. Can you now explain what twitter
64 is
JVDB. Actually I called it
breadbox64, because the 64 is often
called the 'breadbox' and because
that one was still free on twitter.
So, breadbox64 is a twitter client
for the commodore 64. It is a fairly
simple client. You can get status
updates from the people you follow
and you can post a new status as
well. Other functionality you
commonly see in other twitter
clients, like following the public
timeline or adding yourself as a
follower to some users are not
available.
CF. What hardware do you need to run
twitter
JVDB. I use an MMC64 and RR-Net
expansion on a C64 and C128D, so I'm
sure that combination works. I have
not yet tried other setups, but I
don't see why the won't work as long
as they are supported by Contiki
(http://www.sics.se/contiki/).
Contiki is the underlying OS I used
to write breadbox64. As an
alternative, you can use a C64
emulator to give it a go. For
development, I used VICE on a Mac
book, but it will also work on Linux
or Windows (I guess).
CF. Do you need any extra software or
can you just load the twitter program
and start "twittering"
JVDB. You just need the twitter
client. It is one PRG file and one
configuration file that Contiki uses
to store the network settings. At the
start of the program you need to
provide your login name and password
for the Twitter service.
CF. Will there be a specific 128
80column version of twitter
JVDB. Good question, I wanted to have
that feature myself, but my 1084
monitor broke this winter, so I can
only see 40 chars on the setup I use
now. So, maybe if I find a better
setup I'll give the 80 character mode
a try. It should be possible, because
the Contiki OS also can run on the
C128.
CF. How do you configure the client
for example the IP address etc ca you
give our readers a brief walkthrough-
so you load twitter64 then..
JVDB. Ah, you need to get your own
network setup file via this site:
http://contiki.cbm8bit.com/ , save it
as IP.CFG on your breadbox64 disk and
give it a try. You just load it and
run it, as you would with any other
C64 program. Preferably you need a
speed loader though, as it is almost
200 blocks in size.
CF. Does the software need a mouse or
joystick to function or is it just
keyboard input only
JVDB. Everything is directed by the
keyboard. The underlying Contiki OS
has nice support for a mouse and even
has a text UI library on board (CTK),
but I choose to do that part myself.
CF. Are there any TO Do's still
outstanding on the client or is it
now finished
JVDB. It is in a workable state as it
is now, it is not perfect, but it
does what I intended it to do. Saying
that, I do have some plans; cleaning
up the code so it is platform
independent and can be compiled for
other targets supported by the
Contiki OS.
CF. Some reader may be wondering
"what's the point" so why create a
Twitter client for the Commodore 64
what was the motivation
JVDB. My motivation for all this was
to learn the Contiki OS. I'm at a
crossroad in my career as I'll become
an independent contractor in October
of this year. The idea is to find a
job as an independent embedded
software developer. Now, I learned to
know the Contiki OS a few years ago
when they released that demo with the
C64 web server and browser. For me it
looks like a nice tool to have in my
toolbox as it is used in sensor
networks and other low power systems.
CF. Do you have any other projects
for the Commodore 64 you can share
with our readers
JVDB. I really would like to write a
game for the C64. I have some ideas
brewing, but nothing concrete enough
at the moment to talk about; at the
moment, I'm toying with the user port
of the C64, trying to interface with
an AVR micro controller.
CF. Have you plans to develop maybe a
suite around twitter, web client,
mail, ftp client etc
JVDB. Actually, as breadbox64 is
developed on top of Contiki, there is
already a complete Internet suite
available. Contiki comes with all of
them. To be honest, compared to the
web client and other software
available for the Contiki OS, the
twitter application is just a small
fish. The protocol is fairly simple
as it is based on HTTP and some XML.
Without Contiki, I would never have
been able to write breadbox64. I did
not need to write everything from
scratch, the TCP/IP stack was already
there, there is a concept of threads
etc... so basically a complete set of
APIs sits there waiting for somebody
to write a nice networked game for
the C64.
CF. If you could change 3 things
about the commodore 64 when it was
being designed what 3 things would
you change
JVDB. Well, probably not much. The
C64 has this advantage of memory
mapped graphics. If you compare it
against the MSX, they had a separate
video memory and pumping data to that
video RAM is dead slow. So, looking
at it like that, the design engineers
made the correct decision. One thing
that bothered me is the clock speed.
I would have bumped it to 2 MHz. And
also the memory layout for high res
graphics is not optimal, but probably
doing it differently at that time was
not an option.
CF. Do you have a question you feel
was left unanswered
JVDB. No, not really, well maybe this
one: "Why do you still use a C64? You
must be crazy". I often hear this
question when talking to people about
this hobby. But I'll leave it to your
readers to answer that one themselves
=====================================