It certainly would. And it has all the signals required to not need much additional circuitry.But it is more of a 'because I can' excercise. Speed is not a major issue for this. The Model 100 serial speed at the barcode port is capable of speeds much faster than such a camera. As well, this is not a realistic justification (doing 1980s marketing roleplaying here), but the average person would be more willing to plug a peripheral in to the barcode port. The system bus feels more 'advanced' and "Radioshack technician" installable. Not that this is 1984 and we are making an actual product or dealing with a "typical user" today.Anyway, just for novelty as well as the ability to make one circuit that works with both the C64 and the Model 100.ScottSent from my T-Mobile 5G Device -------- Original message --------From: "Alex ..." <[email protected]> Date: 2/24/26 8:51 AM (GMT-05:00) To: [email protected] Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: [M100] DRAM camera capture on the Model 100 Wouldn't the system bus interface be your best bet for speed?On Tue, Feb 24, 2026 at 5:14 AM Scott McDonnell <[email protected]> wrote:In my robotics group, we have been talking about an old concept of using a DRAM IC as an image sensor.
Essentially you take an old DRAM IC in ceramic package with the metal lid and knock off the lid. You pre-charge the DRAM with all 1s and then as light hits each cell, it drains the capacitor and will flip the bit. The brighter the light, the faster it flips. A 4164 DRAM of this type has two 128x256 arrays with a small gap in between. Generally one would just use 128x128 of one half. The camera lens would be arranged to focus on that. A 4164 DRAM is a 1 bit by 64K DRAM. Just one digital output. Now, from robot vision, my brain started working out how to off-load a bunch of the scanning and glue logic, I came to the conclusion that I could capture an image through the joystick port of a Commodore 64. And then I thought, Hmm, this should be possible on the barcode port of the Model 100 as well... On the joystick port, I was thinking a frame sync and the one digital bit. This could be modified to use a longer pulse to indicate a frame start on the Model 100. This could be used to scan in a document or take very, very low resolution images on the Model 100. Doing it through the barcode port would mostly just be for the novelty, of course. The printer port might be the better option. -- Disclaimer: Any resemblance between the above views and those of my employer, my terminal, or the view out my window are purely coincidental. Any resemblance between the above and my own views is non-deterministic. The question of the existence of views in the absence of anyone to hold them is left as an exercise for the reader.The question of the existence of the reader is left as an exercise for the second god coefficient. (A discussion of non-orthogonal, non-integral polytheism is beyond the scope of this article.) Thanks /usr/games/fortune
