Some baller used a Raspberry Pi to play YouTube on the Commodore PET
It converts them into “character screens” that make them look like a matrix dreamland.
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Who knew it was possible to play YouTube videos on a Commodore PET? The PET might be a 40 year old PC with not much modern-day grunt behind it, but it still has some use for consuming today’s media.Thorbjörn Jemanderhas proven so, and the results are utterly stunning.
This amazing modder used a Raspberry Pi Zero, with its built in Wi-Fi, to convert OpenCV images into “ready to use character screens that the Pet can display.” Essentially it ends up looking like some matrix dreamland simulacrum and its totally badass. And while the video goes into a lot of detail that might seem overwhelming, the basic steps the Raspberry Pi takes to create such a cool image are simple:
The process involves a lot of mathematics, including the use of the Temporal Floyd-Steinberg Dithering process. All that honestly goes straight over my head, but it looks like it paid off. The end result is even displayed at 30fps.
Some mistakes were made, as the modder admits, such as the placement of the LEDs, and a signal being connected to the wrong pin, but the biggest fumble was the orientation of the Pi connector being wrong by 180 degrees.
It took Thorbjörn three good weeks to get all the issues fixed up, but as they say, “by the magic of filmmaking, it was done in the blink of an eye.”
If you were the lucky purchaser of something like thisCommodore 65 prototype, and have a hankering for uniting the ancient and the trendy, why not give it a go yourself?
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Screw sports, Katie would rather watch Intel, AMD and Nvidia go at it. Having been obsessed with computers and graphics for three long decades, she took Game Art and Design up to Masters level at uni, and has been rambling about games, tech and science—rather sarcastically—for four years since. She can be found admiring technological advancements, scrambling for scintillating Raspberry Pi projects, preaching cybersecurity awareness, sighing over semiconductors, and gawping at the latest GPU upgrades. Right now she’s waiting patiently for her chance to upload her consciousness into the cloud.
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