Giving the C64 a WiFi Modem

[BigDumbDinosaur]

Dr Jefyll wrote:

A lot of my keystrokes are backspace.

Increasingly, that's the case with me. If the backspaces and deletes counted as CPM I would be up around 400+.

[BigEd]

KC9UDX wrote:

Because you, like me, and everyone else, are unfortunately rigidly accustomed to base 10 maths. :)

Every base is base 10!

[BigDumbDinosaur]

KC9UDX wrote:

Because you, like me, and everyone else, are unfortunately rigidly accustomed to base 10 maths.

Must be because most of us have 10 fingers.

Actually, in data communications the 10 more often than not has to do with the long-standing TIA-232/TIA-422/TIA-485 data format of 8N1, eight data bits, no parity and one stop bit. Since there is always a start bit involved, 10 bits are transmitted per byte. So an interface running at 115,200 bits per second (bps) has a theoretical throughput of 11,520 bytes per second (BPS). Also, to be pedantic, baud is not bits per second. Baud refers to the signaling or "symbol" rate on the wire, not the bit rate. In the early days, the two were one and the same, but parted company following the development of the Bell 103/212A standard for modems.

BTW, most long-time assembly language programmers are not "rigidly accustomed" to working in base-10. Hexadecimal is the lingua franca of much assembly language.

[BigEd]

I have caught myself out a couple of times, thinking that 80 is half of 100, which of course it is in hex, but not in decimal. So, as they say, you can get used to anything. (It's a bit like driving on the wrong side of the road, it's relatively easy, but there's a danger of demagnetising yourself and not being quite sure.)

[BigDumbDinosaur]

BigEd wrote:

(It's a bit like driving on the wrong side of the road, it's relatively easy, but there's a danger of demagnetising yourself and not being quite sure.)

Every time I have visited the UK I have faced death trying to drive.

[BigEd]

I think traffic is a bit more lively on this side of the Atlantic - driving in Italy is my most extreme experience. But then, it's a relatively limited experience.

To get back to wifi modems - I've just posted the follow up to my radio broadcasting challenge:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4411

[KC9UDX]

Anywhere I've been in Italy is pretty tame compared to larger cities here. But nothing here holds a candle to Shanghai.

BigEd, I think you misspelt licence.

[Klaus2m5]

KC9UDX wrote:

BigEd, I think you misspelt licence.

Ed, you're not allowed to use american english! At least one american is offended...

[BigDumbDinosaur]

Klaus2m5 wrote:

KC9UDX wrote:

BigEd, I think you misspelt licence.

Ed, you're not allowed to use american english! At least one american is offended...

No offence here, just abject confusion!

[BigEd]

Sorry about the spelling. Must have been feeling a bit off-color.

[Dr Jefyll]

Oh! -- right: color / colour.

I had a feeling you were being humourous. Even so, it took me a moment...

[nyef]

BigDumbDinosaur wrote:

KC9UDX wrote:

Because you, like me, and everyone else, are unfortunately rigidly accustomed to base 10 maths. :)

Must be because most of us have 10 fingers.

Except those who are working in negabinary (base -2). Hard to have a negative number of fingers, but it's a fun base to work with for basic math.

BigDumbDinosaur wrote:

BTW, most long-time assembly language programmers are not "rigidly accustomed" to working in base-10. Hexadecimal is the lingua franca of much assembly language.

Which is somewhat affected by the bit-width of the computers that they use most often. 36-bit machines tend to be better suited to octal, for example.

And this leaves aside the heavily octal nature of 6502 opcodes. Yes, you have to bit-reverse them for it to really show up, but it's plainly obvious once you do. Or you could look at the SPC700 instruction set. I seem to recall that it is suspiciously similar to the 6502 ('c02?) in terms of semantics, but with the instruction bitfields shuffled around and the official mnemonics altered to disguise the fact.

[BigDumbDinosaur]

Dr Jefyll wrote:

Oh! -- right: color / colour.

I had a feeling you were being humourous. Even so, it took me a moment...

This color/colour difference always reminds me of a "conflict" in the USA during the 19th century concerning the proper word to be used to refer to the location where one goes to meet a train. One group liked the word "station" and another liked "depot." The first group objected to the second group's preference, saying that "station" was proper English and "depot," being a French word (dépôt), was not, and how dare anyone inject those nasty French words into the king's English. There was a big writeup about it in the magazine Locomotive, in which the magazine's editor sided with the "station" group.

In exploring the etymology of "station," it turns out that it is derived from Anglo-French estation, which morphed into Middle English stacioun. The first known use of "station" as we now spell it was in the late 17th century and early in British railway history, train stations were called stations, not depots (my guess is some 19th century Britons also objected to French words).

So neither group would have been able to eliminate any French from the name of the place where you go to catch your morning train to get to work.

[BigDumbDinosaur]

nyef wrote:

BigDumbDinosaur wrote:

BTW, most long-time assembly language programmers are not "rigidly accustomed" to working in base-10. Hexadecimal is the lingua franca of much assembly language.

Which is somewhat affected by the bit-width of the computers that they use most often. 36-bit machines tend to be better suited to octal, for example.

Which is why much of UNIX (and Linux) has historical ties to octal notation.

[BigEd]

I'm going off-topic again, but I think we have one or two radio enthusiasts on the thread: here's a Ladybird book from 1972, with a charming but serious and thorough explanation of "how to build a transistor radio" - for children, but not only for children.
Two online copies of the book, here and here.
Via this writeup on Hackaday: Books you should read: Making a transistor radio. From the comments, it seems quite a few people got started with this book.