In the late 80s and into the 90s, [Cameron Kaiser] aka [ClassicHasClass] was an aspiring journalist, first becoming interested in the career in elementary school and then working on various publications into university. At some point, he started using a piece of software for laying out newspapers called The Newsroom which, he admits, was lacking a lot of tools that would have been modern even for the time, but had an otherwise agreeable price tag thanks to its focus more on home desktop publishing and newsletter production than on full-scale newspaper operations. It did have one interesting feature that he never could figure out, though, at least until he went back and pieced this mystery together.
The software itself ran on the Apple II and was eventually ported to other systems of the era, including the Commodore 64. The mystery feature was known as “Wire Service” and appeared to be a way that users of the software who had a modem could connect with one another and share news releases, layouts, graphics, and other content created in Newsroom, but in the days where it would have been modern never was able to connect to anything. In fact, it was eventually abandoned by the developers themselves in later releases of the software. But [ClassicHasClass] was determined to get it working.
After doing a number of experiments to break down the ways that Wire Service sends information from one Newsroom instance to another, including sending fonts, pictures, and graphics, the next step was to create a modem for the Commodore to receive information. From there a news feed with the latest worldwide happenings can be created and sent to the antique machine. This did take a few tries to get all of the data sent and decoded correctly, but now a modern news feed can be generated, and even printed, with a distinct retro feel.
As far as retrocomputing goes, the Commdore machines are still wildly popular thanks to the ease that they can be modified. This was a design choice at the time they were produced which allowed them to use all kinds of other drives and peripherals, but is still useful now for things like this news service. It’s likely that you wouldn’t even need a hardwired modem to get this to work, either. Take a look at this build which adds a WiFi modem to an old Commodore.
Commodore 64 Reports the News
Source: Manila Flash Report
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