One of the offbeat things I’m
interested in is the possibility of connecting a Commodore 64 to an Ethernet
network, and ultimately to the Internet. Why?
Well, because it’s there as a fun embedded-systems type project.
There’s lots of untapped potential for online network games, and games
were one of the C64’s strengths. It
also appeals to me in a Chindogu
kind of way – it’s un-useless!
This page is a brief summary of the “state of the art” of Ethernet on the C64 as of August 2008. It only looks at “true” Ethernet solutions – other approaches such as dialup, PC gateways, the Lantronix 10/100/1100 and the Palm Ethernet Cradle are covered in the given links.
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The RR-Net. Requires one of: Retro Replay, MMC64, IDE64 V4 (in development) or Super Snapshot V6 (in development) because it plugs into the Amiga-style clock port on those cartridges. Has become the defacto standard, as most of the software listed below only works with it. Available from Individual Computers, Protovision, Vesalia, and C64Reloaded. |
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The FB-Net. "Cheap" standalone cart, compatible with RR-Net. |
GuruTerm – “Telnet” terminal client for calling Commodore-oriented Telnet BBSes. Not a full telnet client (Doesn’t support the IAC protocol), but that is in the works. Uses the uIP stack but only works with the RR-Net.
Singular Browser – Standalone Web browser.WarpCopy64 – Ultra-fast file and disk image copier that works between the C64 and a Windows PC over Ethernet. Also RR-Net only.
Artillery Duel – Simple game allowing head-to-head play between two Commodore 64s over the Internet.
NetRacer
– Multiplayer game allowing simultaneous real-time play between up to
eight Commodore 64s over the
Internet.
uIP
– The core of Contiki. Written
in C. Not tied to any
particular hardware.
netlib64
– A very lightweight all-ML library. Written in DASM
assembler. Supports
RR-Net
and ETH64.
The VICE Emulator can also emulate the original TFE prototype or the RR-Net. Setup instructions are here.
There is apparently a bug with the RR-Net emulation. On the real hardware, you do not “see” the Ethernet-layer packets that you send, whereas in VICE you do.
