The Contiki Desktop OS for C64, NES, 8-bit Atari,

Adam Dunkels writes "This is for those of you who think that a text-based operating system that fits compressed on a 1.44Mb floppy counts as 'tiny': the brand new Contiki operating system and desktop environment for the Commodore 64, with ports to a bunch of other platforms such as the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System, the VIC-20, 8-bit Ataris, Atari Jaguar, the Tandy CoCo, and the Apple ][ under development. The Contiki system includes the following: a multi-tasking kernel, a windowing system and themeable GUI toolkit, a screen saver, a TCP/IP stack, a personal web server, and a web browser. The Contiki web browser, which is likely to be the world's smallest browser given its extremely small memory footprint, is the world's first true web browser for an 8-bit system and probably makes the 21 years old Commodore 64 the oldest system ever to run a real web browser! All of the above programs are contained in a single, fully self-contained, 42 kilobytes large binary. The entire Contiki system with all programs running simultaneously is comfortable in 64 kilobytes of memory. The name 'Contiki' is derived from Thor Heyerdahl's famous Kon-Tiki raft which was able to sail across the Pacific Ocean despite being built using prehistoric techniques, something previously thought impossible. There are also screenshots and a FAQ avaliable."

oh come on,

[Anonymous Coward]

how well do you expect a C64 to stand up to a slashdotting? There're 5 posts and it's already jammed.
Nice project though. I just wish it was available for the Amstrad CPC, then I could ressurect my old dinosaur.

Thats something!

[watzinaneihm]

That should be something, 'cause I can put a commie emulator on my box and run this code from there and I bet the footprint will still be smaller than Lynx.
Or I coud run an emulator from DOS to get multitasking maybe?

Use SLIP for now

[yerricde]

There's no PPP yet folks

Some dial-up Internet access providers still support SLIP (serial line IP), the protocol that PPP largely replaced.

NES Install?

[jmt9581]

How the heck do you get a new operating system onto a gaming console like the NES?

Are the game controller ports used as serial ports?

Do you use a specially made cartridge?

Re:VIC 20!

[turgid]

I had a ZX81 with a 16k RAM pack and a "proper" keyboard. I also had a multi-tasking FORTH ROM (8k) which was mounted on a daughter board with the BASIC ROM so you could switch between them (with a power off). The FORTH was a native Z80 compiler (not interpreter) and it had user-definable "screens", sort of primitive windows, that programs could output to and update independently. It had a screen editor. It was made by a company called Skywave Software, based in Bournemouthm England IIRC. The multi-tasking was real-time, down to a resolution of 0.02 seconds (the timer ticked at 50Hz). Jobs could be scheduled to start at any time etc. It was such cool fun.

Re:Bigger is not necessarily better.

[Hanno]

Nostalgia.

I recently tried an emulator and had a look at some of the games that I spent hours and days on as a teen. Games such as Mercenary [zzap64.co.uk].

And frankly, most of those games that I had the fondest memory of, from today's perspective, plain and simply suck.

Re:An amazing project.

[trash eighty]

Today's software is written so poorly that super high-end hardware is needed to make up for lazy/poor programmers.

the problem today compared to back when all code had to be small, tight and efficient is that there is a much greater demand for programming. the actual number of good, top flight coders is always going to be small as it was back then but these days you have a lot more code that needs to be churned out so a lot of it gets done by journeymen programmers (and i include myself in that)

Re:Cool, but..

[SomeoneGotMyNick]

I don't know... It could have uses for the creative mind.

My digital TV system from the cable company gives me quick news and info in NICE BLOCKY TEXT.

The C64 has blocky text too....

I have about 7 64's in the garage. I can take one, rig up RS232 & SLIP through my Linux router, and plug the 64 into the extra AV port of the TV. Now I can get more information IN THE SAME BLOCKY TEXT than I can with digital cable.

Sure, I can do that with my desktop PC, but i'd have to get off my lazy ass to do it. I'd rather just switch channels with the remote and grab the wired up 64 from the end table and start surfing.

Re:Bigger is not necessarily better.

[Pastey]

While that is true for some games, I strongly disagree about many, many others I played in my youth.

Take the aforementioned example: Elite 2. Have you played it recently? The gameplay is STILL rock solid after all this time. The graphics engine is dated, sure, but what other game gives you such an open-ended experience? You could do almost ANYTHING you wanted! The universe was open to you.

Actually, I'd submit that that is one of the main reasons that games like Grand Theft Auto do so well - the fact that they are so open-ended and leave the decisions up to the player. Scripting is great if it's well done, but how many of us have wished we could have done something different and see the game adapt?


Overall, it's very sad how many games today are released hoping that eye-candy alone with crap gameplay will sell copies. *cough*Unreal2*cough*

Brink back some of these ideas from classic gaming! Older games were often head-and-shoulders above modern titles in originality and gameplay because they HAD to be. The platforms at the time were primitive and couldn't rely on eye-candy as a selling point.

I remember a recent posting here on /. about universities beginning to offer game development majors. I truly hope that something like "gaming heritage 101" is taught to new students. There's a goldmine of great ideas that have been sadly tossed aside that could be salvaged by a savvy developer.

What about QNX?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about QNX? I am no OS guru, but I believe QNX did all the same things a few years ago. I don't think it was ported to any of the commadore systems, but I believe it was capable of being ported to anything. I certainly fit onto a 1.44 mb disk and featured a web server, browser, etc.

http://www.qnx.com/

Not the first C=64 browser

[Asmodai]

In fact, Fairlight created the first browser for the Commodore 64:

http://hem.passagen.se/harlekin/

Look at FairligHTML. (1997!)

Re:An amazing project.

[TheRaven64]

That "old" PIII or PII or K6 sitting on your desk is a power house. What's the problem? The software you're running on it is likely to be wasting 75% of the CPU cycles it eats.

How true. A couple of years ago I was given some code to review, written by an 'experienced' (i.e. paid more than me) programmer. I tryed to run it on a ppro 200, which was just painful. After about an hour of hacking it I'd got the CPU utilisation down to <60%. By the end of the day I had got it down to <20%. After that I came to the conclusion that coders should not be allowed fast machines for testing. You may need a powerful workstation for compiling (although with incremental compiling and good code this is debatable) but testing on a fast machine really does encourage bad code.

It was quite entertaining watching this guy's reaction when he read my changes to his code. 'How does that work? ... That wouldn't work! ... Oh. ... Hmmm ... Wow.' Almost as good as the expression on my project manager's face when I pointed out that they'd missed out the standard IP clause from my contract, an observation that was quickly followed by an offer of sponsorship.

Re:Bigger is not necessarily better.

[kisrael]

Take the aforementioned example: Elite 2. Have you played it recently? The gameplay is STILL rock solid after all this time. The graphics engine is dated, sure, but what other game gives you such an open-ended experience? You could do almost ANYTHING you wanted! The universe was open to you.

If memory serves, the actual spaceship combat (a big draw for the original) wasn't that much fun...it was too realistic for a game, hyper fast speeds, long distance zapping with beams.

But yeah, it was a hell of a universe to be able to fit onto a 1.4 floppy!

He would have sued...

[KjetilK]

Actually, in the early 80-ties, a group of Norwegians started making Kon-tiki personal computers. A rather weird OS, but nevertheless, I can still remember the days where we only had Kon-tiki-machines in school. I think about 1987, Thor Heyerdahl successfully sued the makers of the Kon-tiki PCs for something. Perhaps trademark infringement or something. They then started to use the name "Tiki". For a few years, they continued making their own breed of PCs, before it pretty much collapsed and around 1990, they started doing IBM clones. I can remember the 20 MHz 386 SX boxes we had at school, about that time.

In his older years, Heyerdahl also developed the rather obnoxious habit of threatening with lawsuits against anybody who might disagree with him. He was a big childhood hero of mine, but he pretty much ruined that with a threat directed at a website I edit.

So, if he had lived, he would certainly have sued these people, and BTW, I should probably stop here, so that I don't risk a lawsuit myself.

Re:No PPP and maybe no ethernet

[frovingslosh]

It looks like there may only be 1 ethernet adapter in the world for the C64 too. Found the info on their site for it, but they use an "embedded controler" from someone else and their own "glue logic" and the link to the embedded controler site returns nothing readable. (And the only one they have was apparently taken off an on-line C64 so they could use it for something else). Unless there is software compatable ethernet hardware for the C64, this is pretty useless. With ethernet I wouldn't mind playing with it, but there's not enough information provided to let one duplicate their ethernet interface.

Ataris and such...

[The Lynxpro]

Why did they create another GUI for the C-64? The C64 and other 8bits had the third party GEOS around 1987.
As for the Atari 8bits, I could see a way to hook up an RJ-45 cable rather easily. You'd just need a dongle or something that would connect the ethernet to the SIO port. After all, the SIO port was the forerunner to USB....and created by the very same engineer!
The Atari Jaguar would be an interesting port...ethernet via the Catbox adapter...

Tight code? You wanna know what tight code is?

[thehunger]

Way back when I was studying computer science, we had this book called "The Psychology of Computer Programming".

It referred to a few legendary (back then) programming feats, including one about the guys at the Jet Propulsion Lab.

They found they had 1/2/I forget which/ Kb of RAM left on the Pioneer/Voyager/I forget which/ spaceprobe they were writing the software for.
So they wrote an image pattern recognition program that would study the atmosphere in jupiter/saturn/I forget which/ planet.

Ok so I don't remember all the details but it sounded like really, really, REALLY tight code.

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Re:you'll need broadband to live with it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not necessarily. Most ISPs do caching of one sort or another. Alternatively, put it behind your caching-firewall-on-a-floppy machine that you've no doubt got handling your internet connection :)

But yes, it could be a slight pain. Luckily they know about the situation and are looking into doing caching for a future version.

Hmm, even though with telnet and a web browser you can do almost anything these days, it'd be nice to have ssh, irc, mail and news clients.

(Thinks) Hey, this could be the first OS code that you could put a UUencoded version of up on a single web page without it looking like more than a page or two of ASCII spew. It'd be kind of geeky to hide an entire OS package in a single graphic, as well.

(Other thinks) What if this was part of a viral payload? You could load a complete OS and internet connection package into a corner of your CPU and first-level cache, and it'd never appear on disk or even in primary RAM.

Ouch.