Shafe Shifter Just another guy on the internet.

1Mar/110

The Commodore 64 is Back!

Thats right, the machine that made home computer history in 1982 is coming back. Commodore had quite a history starting back in 1954, but never really hit it big until the early 80s when they managed to bring affordable personal computers into peoples living rooms. Personally my very first computer was a Commodore Vic 20, released in 1980. It had a full 5kb of Ram (The machine I'm writing this on now has 5242880kb of Ram. This was my first computer sending me into the world I live in today.

A few years later in 1982 Commodore released the Commodore 64 featuring a full 64k of ram for under $600. The price alone led it to be one of the top selling personal computers of the decade.

Commodore remained top of their game for for a good 5 or 6 years until IBM Clones and Apple machines took over the consumer space. Finally in 1994, Commodore was forced to declare bankruptcy.

The Commodore brand changed hands a multitude of times after their liquidation and various reboots of the brand as well as the Amiga where attempted with varying levels of success. In April, 2010, Barry Altman founded Comodore USA, LLC.  Oddly, Barry's background isn't in Tech, but in furniture.  Which has to make me wonder if this reboot is going to be like many of the other Commodore reboots and fizzle before it gains any momentum.

The company's about us page says "We are Commodore and AMIGA fanatics, just like many of you. We ask ourselves what could have been, and we are appalled by Apple revisionism. Commodore is back, and we're determined to bring the much loved brand back to the mainstream and restore its prominence in the tech industry to that which it richly deserves. It ain't over 'till we say so." which sounds promising, but only time will tell.

The new Commodore 64 is a modern day PC in a modified C64 Shell, with a handful of modifications.  While it can run windows, the machine comes with the Commodore OS which is a custom blend of Ubuntu Linux.  Apparently you are offered a boot menu that allows you to boot into the original C64 Basic 2.0 operating system.   The machine comes with a lot of your standard PC components tucked away where you might have originally found the machine's I/O ports. The Commodore website claims the machine has 4gb RAM a far cry from the 64kb of the original as well as an Intel® Atom D525 1.80GHz processor. The full specs from the site read:

BACK PANEL CONNECTORS:
1 12V DC Jack
1 PS2 KB/Mouse connectors
1 HDMI
1 DVI-D
1 VGA
4 USB 2.0
1 RJ45 LAN (10/100/1000)
3 3.5mm Audio with S/PDIF out

MODEL: Commodore 64x
PROCESSOR: Intel® Atom D525 1.80GHz (Formerly Pineview-D)
CHIPSET: Intel NM10 (Formerly Tiger Point)
              Next-Generation NVIDIA ION Graphics (ION2)

MEMORY: 2 x DDR2 667/800 Single Channel DIMM slots (up to 4 GB)

GRAPHICS: Next-Generation NVIDIA ION Graphics Processor

AUDIO: Realtek ALC662 6-CH HD Audio
           Nvidia L-PCM digital audio (HDMI 1.3) can support 7.1 output with external decoder

LAN: Realtek RTL8111DL PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet

STORAGE: Intel NM10
              2 SATA2 3Gb/s ports
              JMicron® JMB362 SATA controller
              2 Internal SATA2 3.0Gb/s port with RAID 0, 1, JBOD.

FEATURES:
- ACPI S3 Compliant
- ECO-design for EuP Standard
- 12 VDC jack on back panel for external power supply
- Dedicated DDR3 512MB Graphics Memory Onboard
- Premium DirectX 10 graphics with advanced digital display connectivity
- PureVideo™ Full 1080p HD video and Blu-ray playback
- NVIDIA® CUDA™ technology to accelerate the most demanding applications
- Premium Windows experience with Windows Vista and Windows 7
ONBOARD I/O

CONNECTORS:
1 mini PCI Express x1 Slot
1 Serial header (RS232)
4 SATA2 3Gb/s Connectors with RAID 0, 1, JBOD functions (SATA#3,#4)
2 USB Pin Headers for up to 3 additional USB 2.0 Ports
1 8 bit GPIO header
1 CIR header
1 9-pin Audio Connector
1 Front Panel Connector
3 Fan Headers
1 4-pin Power Connector

 

See more pictures and read more about the new C64 at the Commodore website @ http://www.commodoreusa.net/CUSA_C64.aspx.

If your suddenly feeling nostalgic and would to go back down memory lane -- you may want to have a look at Vice, an emulator for most all commodore models.

 

Classic C64 1980s

The 2011 C64

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19Feb/110

Web Series: Pioneer One

Pioneer One is a web series that is gaining a lot of momentum with the drama and sci-fi fanbases alike.  The creators initially raised $6000 for the pilot through the funding site Kickstarter.com.    Within the first week the pilot episode had been downloaded 420,000 times, 170,000 more downloads than predicted.  Distributed through vodo, bit-torrent and Vimeo,  the pilot was featured at the New York Television Festival and won Best Dramatic Series. They are gearing up to release episodes 3 and 4.  And I have to say it's a must watch.  the production is impressive given the low budget and the story itself as with the acting are on par with a larger flick.

From the website:
A mysterious spaceship enters Earth's atmosphere, spreading radiation over hundreds of miles of rural Montana. Officials are quick to bring up the possibility of a terrorist attack, specifically the detonation of a dirty bomb, but an investigation of the debris in Canada uncovers a live human being in a Soviet space suit in an unstable condition. A note handwritten in Russian found at the crash site says that the man is the child of cosmonauts living at a base on Mars.

Check them out at: http://www.pioneerone.tv/

I'd also highly recommend sending some cash their way after you buy me a beer for telling you about such a great series.

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27Jan/110

IPv4 Countdown, down to the days.

ipv4

Are you ready for IPv6? Only a few days left until the ipv4 apocalypse.

 

Some interesting links:

Fox news has no idea what they are reporting on:
"Web developers have tried to compensate for this problem by creating IPv6 -- a system that recognizes six-digit IP addresses rather than four-digit ones."
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/01/26/internet-run-ip-addresses-happens-anyones-guess/

Twitter Feed reporting the countdown:
http://twitter.com/IPv4Countdown

Facebook Page
http://www.facebook.com/pages/IPv4-Countdown/162683847102050

Want a countdown widget thingy? On your phone perhaps?
http://ipv6.he.net/statistics

For those who aren't in the know of this techno-apocalypse wikipedia has the answers for you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4_address_exhaustion

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26Jan/110

Quick Debian Server Provisioning Script

Here is a quick little bash script that I use to initially provision Debian LAMP servers from a fresh install. This should setup PHP with all the whistles and bells, a whole handful of utilities as well as install webmin for you.

Nothing to complicated here, just a quick little script to speed up your life.

clear
clear
echo 'Debian Provisioning Script'
echo '01-12-2011 TNL Total Solutions'
echo 'http://www.tnlsoft.com'
echo ''
read -p "Press any key to begin provisioning"
clear
echo 'Preparing server for provisioning...'
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get dist-upgrade
echo ''
echo 'All existing packaged updated'
echo ''
read -p "Press any key to begin installing NEW packages"
clear
echo 'Installing Required Packagesn'
apt-get install apache2 apache2-utils apache2.2-common bind9 bind9-host bind9utils curl gawk denyhosts sendmail ftp proftpd gzip iptables lftp libapache2-mod-perl2	libapache2-mod-php5 libapache2-reload-perl libcurl3 libxml2 lynx mysql-client mysql-common mysql-server ntp ntpdate openssh-client openssh-server openssl perl perl-base perl-modules php-pear php5 php5-cli php5-common php5-curl php5-dev php5-gd php5-geoip php5-imagick php5-imap php5-ldap php5-mcrypt php5-mhash php5-mysql php5-odbc php5-xmlrpc proftpd python rdate samba samba-common sendmail sendmail-base sendmail-bin sendmail-cf sensible-mda subversion tar unzip wget makeself zip libghc6-openal-dev libsage2 libsdl-gfx1.2-4 mingw32 mingw32-binutils mingw32-runtime
echo ''
echo ''
echo 'Creating Skel'
mkdir /etc/skel/www
mkdir /etc/skel/logs
mkdir /etc/skel/www/cgi-bin

cd /var/www
rm index.html
wget http://www.tnlsoft.com/debian/index.txt
mv index.txt index.php
chmod 0777 index.php
cp index.php /etc/skel/www

echo ''
echo ''

echo 'Reconfiguring PHP 5'
cd /etc/php5/apache2
mv php.ini php.ini.old
wget http://www.tnlsoft.com/debian/php.ini

echo ''
echo ''
echo 'Installing PEAR Packages'
pear install Mail
pear install Net_SMTP

echo ''
echo ''
echo 'Enabling Apache Mods'
a2enmod dav_fs
a2enmod dav
a2enmod rewrite

echo ''
echo ''
echo 'Restarting Apache'
/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

echo ''
echo ''
echo 'Installing Webminn'
cd /root
wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/webadmin/webmin/1.530/webmin-1.530.tar.gz
tar -xvf webmin-1.530.tar.gz
cd webmin-1.530
./setup.sh
echo 'Done!'

Grab it here: http://dev.tnlsoft.com/download/debian_provision.zip

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28Dec/100

iPhone App: RDP Lite (Remote Desktop)

All server administrators are well aware that servers never go down during business hours, they have explicit code that requires any downtime to occur in the middle of the night or when your out at the bar away from your computer.  Because of this, the iPhone can be a server administrator's best friend.    Anyone who has the misfortune of dealing with Windows servers will find they spend a great deal of time in the Windows Remote Desktop application (RDP).  Many server administrators will opt for services such as LogMeIn.com because they offer an iPhone App (for $30) and one doesn't have to worry about setting up firewall rules.  But those who are opting to pay for one of these remote desktop services out there probably haven't discovered RDP Lite for the iPhone.   RDP Lite is a must have for any server administrator who has the to manage Windows based servers.

Frankly there is nothing pleasant about trying to manage and troubleshoot a server from your phone, even with the right tools the screen size is a real annoyance.  Windows RDP on the iPhone is a lot worse, as the windows GUI was never designed for a screen the size of the screen on your iPhone.  I imagine that on the iPad this less of an issue, as you have a lot more screen real estate to work with.

Nonetheless, RDP Lite can be a lifesaver when out away from your computer.  RDP Lite allows you to remote desktop from your iPhone or iPad over 3G or wifi.  The free version allows you to save multiple connection profiles.  The controls are fairly intuitive, although I found mouse control a bit difficult on the iPhone screen and the free version lacks right click.  Overall though a great app.

The paid version will run you $5.99 in the app store and seems well worth it.  The paid version offers a handful of additional features including:

  • Another cool key board
  • More mouse functions: right button,drag and over (hover)
  • Mouse wheel
  • Text macro support
  • Can handle 20 different Host configurations.

Find RDP Lite in the App Store or visit their homepage at http://mochasoft.dk/iphone_rdp.htm

Also See: Check Your Server Status With Net Status


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