Ever hear the adage, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks?” Could the same be said about old computer systems? You had better not mention that to Syd Bolton from the Brantford’s Personal Computer Museum in Canada or else he may laugh at you. The reason for this is that Bolton, who is very knowledgeable about vintage computers, has made it possible for a computer system almost three decades old to read and send out Tweets.
So what is the big deal with that? The computer used for the Twitter stunt was a Commodore VIC-20 that was first introduced to the masses back in 1980. In addition, this computer is very limited in onboard memory as the system only contained 5K of memory and of that, it only allowed 3,583 bytes of memory for programming. Bolton was able to create a program in that tiny amount of memory space in the VIC-20 called tweetVer, and that program allows users to both receive and send Tweets on the classic computing platform.
To see the historic moment as it happened late last month, be sure to check out the following video when Bolton was able to successfully send their very first Tweet from the VIC-20 in front of a captive audience.
Read more at the Personal Computer Museum