We love modern technology here at Walyou, but we also love people doing cool things with retro tech. And nothing is cooler than the Commodore 64, the humble 8-bit machine that people still find cool uses for.
Metalab in Berlin, Germany uses theirs, the Blinkenwall, to control a giant video wall ...
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We've seen some ambitious Blinkenwalls in our time. Nearly all of the attention is unsurprisingly focused on the wall, however, and not on the often clever hardware and software behind it. Vienna's Metalab wants to shift the limelight by kicking it old school. Instead of the thoroughly modern Arduino and Fonera hotspot that normally light up Metalab's 45-block glass wall, the team's Blinken64 project swaps in a Commodore 64 with a cassette drive and the unusual Final Cartridge III feature extender. Getting lights to strobe requires dusting off more than just hardware -- all the animations have to be written in assembly-level MOS Technology 6510 code that even our nerdy parents might forget. The result you'll see in the video after the break is a far cry from the relatively easy, web-accessible hardware that normally powers such blinkenlight creations, but it's also a testament to how relevant classic technology can remain when it's in the right hands.
Filed under: Desktops, Misc. Gadgets
Metalab wires its Blinkenwall to run from Commodore 64, gives no word on the obligatory Tetris port (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Jul 2012 00:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Hack A Day | Email this | Comments I love a good mod. The crazier the better. This one is crazy and all kinds of retro awesome. Some of you might know Jeri Ellsworth. She works for Valve and helped them start their hardware R&D department. Now she has yet another cool thing under her belt. She created this amazing Commodore 64 bass guitar/keytar.
She created it for last weekend’s Maker Faire. Apparently, it wasn’t a very difficult mod. She just went out and bought the cheapest bass guitar that she could find, took the neck off and the bottom part where the strings are attached and mounted them on a C64.
Okay it was a little harder than that. She set up a sensor on each string, which detect the sounds, then reproduce sampled notes through the original Commodore sound chip. The keyboard also produces additional synthesized sounds. Even though she thinks it could sound better, I think it sounds pretty great. This is definitely one of the cooler guitar mods we’ve seen in awhile – at least since the NES guitar.
[via Laughing Squid via Geeks Are Sexy]
If you thought Commodore 64 was an ancient relic from the 1980s, you might probably be correct. However, that didn’t stop this resourceful and talented woman to turn a Commodore 64 keyboard into a ‘Keytar’.
At the Maker Faire, Jeri Ellsworth was seen strumming her strange looking instrument while skating on ...
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Terribly sad news from the family of Jack Tramiel today. The Polish-born businessman is perhaps best known in the technology universe for his founding of Commodore International, the company responsible for the Commodore 64, 128, Amiga, etc. Tramiel's story is an inspiring one; he was born into a Jewish family, and during World War II, was sent to Auschwitz. He was rescued in April of 1945, and some 39 years later he purchased Atari Inc.'s Consumer division and formed the Atari Corporation that is so well recognized in gaming lore. As first reported by Forbes, Martin Goldberg -- a writer working on a book about the Atari brand and the early days of video games and computing with Atari Museum founder Curt Vendel -- had this to say: "Jack Tramiel was an immense influence in the consumer electronics and computing industries. A name once uttered in the same vein as Steve Jobs is today, his journey from concentration camp survivor to captain of industry is the stuff of legends." Tramiel leaves behind his wife, three sons and their extended families.Commodore founder Jack Tramiel passes away at age 83 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Apr 2012 15:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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