2026 Retrocomputing Problem: I Would Do Something For Serial Knowledge

These days we take high-speed networking as a right, however it may be tough to get classic computer systems speaking to fashionable machines. To help solve this problem [jaime] came up with Meatloaf which can provide files to a Commodore no matter their location or medium of storage.

Meatloaf is an ESP32 machine at its core, which plugs in to any of a number of Commodore computer systems by way of their IEC serial port. Many related programs exist to bridge the hole between the fashionable planet and the now-retro one, however this one connects to a devoted service which factors in direction of information regardless of the place they’re saved. There is a few native storage, however it could additionally retrieve information from any energetic URL, and Meatloaf retrieves the information after which sends them to the Commodore over that serial hyperlink.

Part of what makes this distinctive is that the consumer doesn’t have to configure Meatloaf in any explicit manner, every thing is finished from the Commodore so long as the URL is understood to the consumer. The system may even parse nested information like archive file sorts and ship them alongside to the pc identical to it might in the event that they had been on a period-correct floppy drive. There’s a GitHub project page as well for anybody seeking to get into the weeds of this serial knowledge interface.