Computers and the internet have been around for some decades. But to some people, it felt like forever, in a good way.
While technology is advancing so fast, that the Moore's Law at its strictest definition may become irrelevant, some of the best invention doesn't have to really solve real world problems, nor does it need to reinvent the wheel.
Instead, some products are there because their creators think that it's possible to create them, when no one has ever thought of creating them.
The same goes to this Commodore PET, which has been customized to stream YouTube.
The computer in question is one from Commodore International, a 40-year-old computer.
It has been tweaked by Thorbjörn Jemander, so that it can connect to a nearby Wi-Fi, and stream a requested video, and projected it to its display, which can only show the color green.
The Commodore PET was a popular device, and was the computer that led the creation of the even more popular Commodore 64, that would go on to sell well over 12 million units around the world.
It was officially announced in 1976, as the first of Commodore's mass-market personal computer.
Commodore PET computer was sold well over $3,500 when it was introduced.
What Jemander did, was first acquiring an extremely rare Commodore PET 600, which was apparently a Commodore 8296 SK model with a detachable keyboard.
Instead of PET's standard 8-bit RAM, this 8296 SK was made specifically for the Swedish market, and was shipped with a much higher128 KB of memory.
And instead of the standard built-in monochrome monitor with 40×25 character graphics, 8296 SK came with a larger 80×25.
While the big boost doesn't make the 8296 SK any better if compared to modern standards, Jemander had the idea of ramping up its capacity.
Realizing that there was zero chance a dedicated YouTube app could be developed for the the 8296 SK, Jemander had to upgrade both its hardware and software.
Jemander created what he called the BlixTerm, which took the form of a cartridge connected to one of the PET 600's expansion ports on the back.
Inside the cartridge is a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, which allows the device to connect to YouTube over Wi-Fi, loads a requested video, and then converts the 640×200 grayscale stream to an 80×25 grid of ASCII characters from the PET’s internal ROM.
Jemander then uses a second card to load the generated frames from the Raspberry Pi into the PET’s video memory.
To overcome the bottleneck in the antique computer, Jemander had to optimize the whole process.
In the end, Jemander's invention managed to achieve a very watchable 30 FPS playback speed.
Through the BlixTerm version 0.02's YouTube Viewer interface, all he needed to do to watch YouTube videos, is to type in the video's URL, and hit enter (return button).
It's worth noting that the display of the Commodore computer can only show text. Originally, it cannot even display still images.
Jemander managed to emulating graphics on the text-only display by pushing the boundaries of the "automated ASCII art" (PETSCII) on the Commodore device.
