Hackaday · Creativity & design

Commodore 128 Used for Marine Vessel Tracking

A project called AIS4CBM has been developed to display marine vessel tracking data on a Commodore 128 computer.

The system uses the Automatic Identification System (AIS) to receive and display vessel movements and telemetry. The AIS4CBM project decodes AIS reports using assembly code and displays the data on the C128. A BASIC 8 front end plots vessels on a map, with an option for a BASIC 7 text interface.

This project requires specific hardware upgrades for the Commodore 128, including a 512 KiB REU RAM expansion and 64 KiB VDC memory. A SwiftLink compatible serial interface is also necessary to input the AIS data. An Ultimate-II+ unit can satisfy most of these hardware requirements.

While not recommended for professional maritime operations, the project is presented as a fun endeavor, similar to other retrocomputing projects that track data like aircraft movements.

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