Submitted by The C64 group ‘Singular’ has released ‘Singular Browser’ – a graphical web browser with CSS support for the C64. It’s still in the early beta stages, but looks quite impressive for a computer launched in 1982.
The C64 group ‘Singular’ has released ‘Singular Browser’ – a graphical web browser with CSS support for the C64. It’s still in the early beta stages, but looks quite impressive for a computer launched in 1982.
Isn’t it ironic that this story is featured just a couple of items up from a piece talking about how programmers can only come up with bloatware these days?
It’s very ironic
Remember, this is a 1 MHz computer with 64Kb (yes Kilobyte) of RAM. The extent that people push the C64 hardware is sickening. From web/VNC servers to Wolfenstein to web browsers, the C64 has attempted pretty much everything at some point. It even had a Mac like OS that was the second most widely used OS in the 80’s (just below Mac OS) http://www.guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/geosc64
It’s still a nice computer
I liked the Amstrad 664 better, but the C64 was nice as well. Awesome sprite function
From web/VNC servers to Wolfenstein to web browsers.
Ehh…Wolfenstein?!? I know Contiki with it’s built-in webserver, VNC-server, telnet and native webbrowser…but Wolfenstein? You got a link for that? I’m kinda doubting the Wolfenstein part.
Castle Wolfenstein and Return to Castle Wolfenstein were released on both the C64 and Atari 8bit lines. These were 2D adventure games that inspired Wolfenstein 3D. I have yet to see a version of Wolfenstein 3D on any of the old 8bit systems.
There are such versions, however in terrible quality.
There was a speccy version with dithered pixels of 4×4 size. Playable game, not a demo.
It was run as part of a demo in 1995, http://www.c64.ch/demos/realdetail.php?id=33
I had GeoOS, terrible to use with a joystick, Mice were so expensive then! Or maybe it was because I was still at school and skint? Just looking at that link, and it dosn’t look half bad really. Well for the time anyway!
Wasn’t the Atari OS, called cough, cough, TOS based on Geos?
hell yeah!!. That rocks! I’ve got to get my C128 on the net soon.
How come they can support a standard like css properly on a 1982 machine, but Microsoft can’t get IE to properly support it in 2006 on modern hardware?!??!
How come they can support a standard like css properly on a 1982 machine, but Microsoft can’t get IE to properly support it in 2006 on modern hardware?!??!
Heck, not even Firefox has complete CSS/CSS2 support.
No, but the parts it supports is supported pretty much correct.
The parts IE supports is supported wrongly. There’s a catch here remember
. o O ( Hmm… I wonder if there’s a browser for GeOS for the C64 )
Yes it is. It’s called The Wave and it can be used with Wheels OS (Geos upgrade made by Maurice Randall)
Yes it is. It’s called The Wave and it can be used with Wheels OS (Geos upgrade made by Maurice Randall)
Yes..but it requires a ‘SuperCPU’ and 4 MB of RAM, so it’s not quite the same.. 😐
http://cmdrkey.com/cbm/wave/wave.html
Wings OS is the most impressive http://wings.webhop.org/
I wonder if it will ever pass the acid2 to test or an equivalent for text mode browsers
I think this is a fantastic example. Just imagine the potential of a modern computer, if it is pushed to the same extent as this.
Yeah, if and only if… it’d be awesome.
However, I honestly don’t think that to be truly possible. As nice as it is to “optimize” a modern PC, the reality is far more complicated, to my reckoning. PCs (to lump a term) are constantly being asked to do increasingly complex, simultaneous activities. Right now, mine is checking the weather, fielding IMs, ripping down an old Doobie Brothers’ CD, playing “Bullet the Blue Sky” in Rhythmbox, and allowing me to post here, and I’m fairly sure I’m laughingly short of occupying my computer as much as many of the readers here are. Yet, the complexity and simultaneity is an arduous act in itself. Push one activity too far, and another suffers. Loose up a bunch of capacity, someone will just pile something else in there. Now, if the discipline exists to “single-task” as much as possible, due to hard limits, then optimization becomes a dominant theme, and you have these stories of the “little ‘puter that could”. Bravos all around, I’m sure. But hey, it’s 2006, not 1986. I mean, I miss the fun, cheap functionality of my old C64, but would I trade my Lappy 486 in for it? Not on your best biscuits, Martha.
I think it very much depends on what kind of hardware the developers have. If they are forced to use very low resources in development then the resulting software will be lightweight. I suppose most of time of the C64 browser development was used in meditating efficient algorithms, finding heuristics and optimizing existing code.
How can you connect a C64 to the net? What kind of network adaptor is there?
Dano.
It’s called a modem…
Which reminds me, I still have a Vic20 in a closet, still in its original box, with 300 Baud modem (smokin’)
300 Baud…now that’s speed…only 2000x slower than my cable connection!
I remember the modem on my C64, it was an ALL-METAL external box the size of a ham sandwich. 300 blazing baud of raw power. Watching all that rich, colrful text SCROLL BY was truly a marvel, eh? Of course, I never had a VIC, but I’m sure similar performance was possible.
I’ve actually been wondering if I couldn’t set up my Vic as a Unix terminal, just for fun. I’m sure it’s been done before, though…
The final ethernet – http://www.dunkels.com/adam/tfe/
Ehh…Wolfenstein?!? I know Contiki with it’s built-in webserver, VNC-server, telnet and native webbrowser…but Wolfenstein? You got a link for that? I’m kinda doubting the Wolfenstein part.
Perff of No Name made a playable wolfenstein clone called “mood”. It’s only in preview state at the moment, however. http://noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?id=3339
The graphics is made out of 8×4 non-dithered blocks, so it’s not the prettiest wolfenstein-clone ever made on the c64, but it’s playable – it’s got monsters, weapons, powerups and everything. A number of other doom-clones has been made in demos on the c64 using 4×4 block graphics, and some with even smaller pixels.
So wolfenstein-clones _have_ been done on the C64. The first attempt was in 1994 and the first ‘proper’ wolfenstein-clones were released in december 1995.