Denial

Personal Computer Museum Makes the VIC-20 Twitter

First Tweet from the Past! New Software Lets Vintage Computers Access Twitter

Brantford, Ontario – February 16, 2010 – To celebrate its fifth year in business, the Personal Computer Museum (http://www.pcmuseum.ca) has created a new program that allows the breakthrough, under $300 personal computer of the 1980’s – the Commodore VIC-20 to access Twitter, one of the world’s foremost online communities. CKPC FM 92.1 personality Ed McMahon (Mayor of the Morning) will create computer history with the first VIC-20 Tweet and afterwards museum visitors can tweet too. The first “tweet

wtf

sydbolton wrote:There’s not much demand for new VIC-20 software.

The hell there isn't.

Cool, the museum is in Brantford, Ontario. My uncle and his family lived there in 1979-1986 and we went there to visit them in 1980.

I thought that the C64 was the first computer with a 'Twit' facility? I'm sure Nigel was talking about it, so this isn't a world's first afterall.

EDIT: Yep, Commodore 64 users could be Twits before this VIC-20 development, as in Commodore Free.

Regards,

Shaun.

This is astounding, Will there be a live video feed so that we can watch this historical event?

BTW: How do I go about getting the software? I had a look on the site as suggested in the first post but I could find no link.

Yes, of course, the Commodore 64 "tweeted" awhile ago. And the C64 was not the first "vintage" device to do so either.

However, the point of this story is that

a) This is a VIC-20 Tweeting. NOT a Commodore 64.
b) Contiki was used on the C64. The VIC version uses only an unexpanded VIC with 5K of RAM. 5K!!!
c) This is more than just making a VIC-20 Tweet. This is the launching point of TWEETVER - an open source platform that will allow virtually ANY classic computer to Tweet. More details to follow after Saturday's event.

Although there will not be streaming live we will be video taping it and posting it on YouTube after Saturday.

Thanks for your interest.

Syd,

What is the hardware to interface to the wider world of twits?

You will have to come and see how it all works. More technical details and information about TweetVER will be available next week.

sydbolton wrote:Yes, of course, the Commodore 64 "tweeted" awhile ago. And the C64 was not the first "vintage" device to do so either.

However, the point of this story is that

a) This is a VIC-20 Tweeting. NOT a Commodore 64.
b) Contiki was used on the C64. The VIC version uses only an unexpanded VIC with 5K of RAM. 5K!!!
c) This is more than just making a VIC-20 Tweet. This is the launching point of TWEETVER - an open source platform that will allow virtually ANY classic computer to Tweet. More details to follow after Saturday's event.

Although there will not be streaming live we will be video taping it and posting it on YouTube after Saturday.

Thanks for your interest.

The bit about Contiki doesn't really make sense as all of the recently created programs that fall under the 'Contiki' banner seem to be stand-alone programs rather than requiring Contiki to run, so it probably just uses parts of the Contiki kernal in the code.

Your third point is really what Contiki is all about I think???

Regards,

Shaun.

Vic20-Ian wrote:What is the hardware to interface to the wider world of twits?

I suppose, a GSM module equipped with a serial port, a level converter box on the user port, and a small terminal program on the VIC. Et voila.

Shaun

Contiki is an alternate operating system - and yes, has been available on other platforms. What we've done is create a platform SPECIFICALLY for older computers to TWEET from. Contiki is a more generalized thing.

Why I'm trying to understand from your point of view is what the Commodore 64 has to do with this at all.

We are setting a record (as far as I know) for a computer with the least resources - 5K of RAM and 1 MHz Processor - being able to Tweet.

The fact that other devices and vintage computers have done this have no bearing on what we've done. This is why your post is confusing. Again, nobody has "beaten" us to it -- it's a first!

More technical details will follow after Saturday as mentioned.

sydbolton wrote:You will have to come and see how it all works. More technical details and information about TweetVER will be available next week.

A bit difficult from the Isle of Man but thanks for the invitation.

I live somewhere off the East coast of the USA, East of Ireland, West of England, UK


There is even a Burj tower in Dubai, China apparently according to this forum

(Sorry still chuckling at that one)

Looks like Syd is publicizing the crap out of this one because I just saw this mentioned on Gizmodo. I posted a plug for Denial (it can't hurt) but it hasn't been approved yet.

Golan if you'd like, I can post a link to this site on our landing page for the Twitter event. We had over 20,000 hits on Tuesday!!