Subject: Re: [bug#40033] Add "Vice" commodore emulator

From: Christopher Lemmer Webber <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 17 Mar 2020 17:17:33 -0400

Ludovic Courtès writes:

> Hi Chris!
>
> Christopher Lemmer Webber <[email-masked]> skribis:
>
>> Here's a patch to add the "vice" commodore emulator.  It builds and
>> works, but has some vices of its own (har har).
>>
>>  - It ships with the original Kernal/Basic from the c64 (and other
>>    systems), including the payload for the original Microsoft Basic.
>>    That's... probably not ok for Guix.
>
> You mean it ships the ROM as a pre-built proprietary binary?
> That wouldn’t be OK.  :-/

Yes, they are the original binary ROMs shipped on the C64.

The funny thing is it's in the data/ directory.  Lispers love to say
that "code and data and data is code"; in this case, at least data/ has
object code. ;)

I agree that it isn't acceptable for Guix.

>>  - One solution is coming out of the Mega65 project (a damn cool project
>>    in general):
>>      https://github.com/MEGA65/open-roms
>
> Do you know if that could actually work?  That would be perfect.

I think they don't work perfectly, but can work for some things.  It
would be nice to support it.

I don't have time, but I invite someone else to give a try at building
the mega65 open-roms package and linking it in.  So I may have to leave
this at a "passing this along to a future community member" stage of
packaging.

If someone else can try packaging the mega65 ROMs (honestly don't know
how hard it is to do), I can at least help playtest.  It would be really
good for computing history purposes to free one of the blobs holding us
back from exploring past computing systems!

>>    (Just look how cool the Mega65 hardware is, btw!)
>>      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEhZfkQ3bAk
>
> Woow, fun!  :-)
>
> Thanks!
> Ludo’.