A Swede managed to post a YouTube video on a 1970s Commodore! For this, he used the Raspberry Pi Zero, this mini-computer available for a few euros.
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[EN VIDÉO] In 2050, we will work with transparent computers Today we are riveted to our screens, but tomorrow, augmented reality and the power of computers will free us from our workstations, thanks to transparent or virtual screens. This is what Planète + explains to us in its new episode of Rêver le futur, broadcast this Friday, February 3, 2017, and of which here is an exclusive extract.
What could the first computers, released in the 1970s and 1980s, be used for? Apart from finding them a place in a museum, not much… But a Swede by the name of Thorbjörn Jemander wanted to get to the bottom of it, and he got himself a Commodore PET, released in 1977. Its mission: to display YouTube on the screen. In theory, it’s impossible…
As awful as it is obsolete, this ancestor of the Commodore 64 had a processor MOS 6502 clocked at 1 MHz and a 128 KB memory. Its screen, green monochrome, could display 80 lines out of 25, and at the time, it was necessary to wait several seconds, even minutes, to launch a file. Obviously, the graphic part is non-existent, and to launch a YouTube video, on the command line, this Swede was tricky.
Do not expect miracles in terms of quality but the DIY is successful. © YouTube, Thorbjörn Jemander
Adapt the video stream to a monochrome screen
He thus took advantage of an expansion port, located at the back, to slip in a cartridge designed around a Raspberry Pi Zero. This mini-motherboard costs only 5 euros, and it integrates a processor, random access memoryand… a chip Wireless. Which allowed him to connect to Internetand therefore to YouTube.
It was then necessary to take advantage of a video player, capable of converting the video stream in grayscale of 640 x 200 points into an 80 x 25 character grid ASCII from the memory of Commodore. This is obviously where it gets complicated, but this handyman got a speed playback with a fluidity of 30 FPS. Mission accomplished: you can watch a YouTube video on a computer released… 45 years ago! Proof that it’s a real feat, its instructions have already been viewed more than 160,000 times!
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