Contiki, CC65, and the original Famicom Modem
The Infamous Famicom Modem
Playpower wants to make “the world’s most affordable home computer” more accessible to developers. Sites like Retrozone have done a lot to make it easier for people to develop their own cartridges. Brian Parker has even made a fine set of tutorials for programming assembly code on the NES. But if we really want to open up development, we need to use a more accessible language.
So we’ve been playing around with cc65, an open source C compiler for 6502 chips. This has enabled our Hangzhou friend Newsclan to produce a framework for easily making “Choose your own adventure” style games. Unfortunately, the compiler libraries for cc65 don’t currently support all the NES hardware, but Ernesto in Argentina is making headway on that, using the NES system documentation.
If we could get cc65 to fully support the NES, we might be able to fully port the operating system Contiki, which was designed for 8-bit platforms. Contiki offers a TCP/IP stack, with IRC, Telnet, and the world’s smallest web browser. It has been previously been used to enable an Apple II to surf the web.
Lest you think that internet access on a famiclone is ridiculous, here’s a picture of the modem created for the Famicom back in 1988. Over 10 million were sold in Japan, mostly for betting on horse races or trading stocks. Here’s an article about the Famicom Communicator, hardware that is also likely in the public domain due to expired patents.