Re: C64 cluster

From: Christopher Phillips (shrydar_at_jaruth.com)
Date: 2007-11-07 14:25:20

On 07/11/2007, at 16:58 , Marko Mäkelä wrote:

>  Christopher Phillips (are you here?), who gave me the final
> spark to implement the C2N232, mentioned to me that he implemented a
> multi-computer scrolltext where the computers were connected via
> joystick ports.

I'm here.  John West did something similar the previous year - After  
being impressed with the concept and the fact he'd actually done it,  
I then nitpicked about the lack of raster-bars and colours and was  
given the standard UCC response of "bring code!".

My implementation was initially intended to sent actual characters or  
possibly a tick per character across the joyports, but at the end of  
the day I just sent a reset-message signal from the first c64 to the  
second shortly after the first character of the scroll had exited the  
screen. (too many issues with repeated or missing chars on the second  
machine otherwise).

It's a little dangerous connecting joyports directly - I fried a CIA  
or two before I gave up on that technique altogether.  Perhaps  
someone a little more hardware savvy than I could design some simple  
protection from some passive componants?


As for uses, it would be interesting to see if there could be any  
time saved on 3d rendering.  I'm guessing that the rasterising would  
best be done on the machine doing the displaying (unless you're doing  
a low res char mode render across a grid of screens!), but there  
could well be some merit in having a number of non-display machines  
taking turns providing 2d coordinates of endpoints, post 3d  
transform, clipping, and perhaps even hidden surface removal.





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