Berkeley TCP socket interface for the Apple IIgs

Scott C. Linnenbringer writes "In case you wanted to do something cool with your fancy little Apple IIgs in the back room, you can use GS/TCP to implement a standard BSD socket interface, allowing you to connect via SLIP, MacIP, and soon PPP on a GNO/ME (GNO Multitasking Environment) UNIX system for the IIgs, now completely abandoned, open-sourced and labeled freeware. GS/TCP also comes with ftp and inetd, built with ORCA/C directly from BSDi sources (hacked, of course,) and a text web browser for GNO/ME can be found at the website."

Comments

very slow

[jchristopher]

"allowing you to connect via SLIP, MacIP, and soon PPP... and a text web browser for GNO/ME can be found at the website."

The ironic part is that the whole thing runs about as fast as a browser on OS X.

how wonderfully useless

[SuperBanana]

This is both interesting and a terrible shame. It's interesting, because the people involved obviously have some talent. It's a shame, because they're devoting such talent to utterly useless projects.

There's NOTHING you couldn't do better, easier, cheaper, for less power/heat, in a smaller package, and faster(all by dozens of orders of magnitude)...with something more modern.

Even the 8-bit uC sitting on my desk right now runs at 50mhz, fully supports C or an easy to learn assembly language- it's got seperate data+IO busses, 5-6 serial ports(SPI, IrDA, RS232, RS485 are all supported), dozens of IO lines for bitwise or parallel IO...builtin ethernet with a VERY thorough royalty-free TCP/IP stack w/large set of utility routines, two forms of realtime operations(one is the uCOSII). Oh yes, and it costs about $50 in single-unit quantities including ethenet magnetics etc...with very aggressive quantity pricing. Oh, and it's based off the Z80 family, so if you know the Z80, you'll find this baby pretty familiar(if you hadn't guessed already, this is the Rabbit3000 core module.)

...and it's just ONE of hundreds of uC's available.

Re:how wonderfully useless

[SuperBanana]

I'm glad someone appointed you the official arbitrator of usefulness.

Nobody appointed me. Look at availability(poor), functionality(poor), serviceability(none, period), development tools(none), technology(OVER twenty years old)...and decide for yourself. You can barely buy 5.25" floppies these days(although the IIGS did use 3.5"). It's like people who still waste time developing stuff for the Commodore 64, or insist that tube amps/phonographs sound better(they don't, they sound worse.) If they stopped and looked around at the tools available to them today, they'd be amazed. Read the review of the Rabbit2000 in Circuit Cellar; the guy can't stop raving about how what used to require a 500W power supply, had a couple bytes of ram, a few IO lines, NO development tools etc...is outclassed by something that fits on his thumb, and offers so much more.

It's a shame that so many people today waste time on frivolous things like "having an idea and pursuing it"

I NEVER said you shouldn't have an idea and pursue it. But there's no sense in working on something that is DEAD, when there's something more modern available that's better in ALL ways.

Re:I don't hack for profit, I hack for FUN

[SuperBanana]

I don't hack for profit, I hack for FUN

Who said anything about profit? Further, I hack around for fun too, but I do it with modern tools and technologies. There's no point in starting with older technology, since nobody uses it anymore. Do you realize that most of the IIGS probably used TTL circuitry, instead of CMOS, which is the norm now? Nevermind that it runs at such slow speeds that you'd never learn about RF interference, EFI/EMI considerations, etc...

The point of projects like this one is to have fun and learn skills that can be used for endeavors that have a more practical use.

Please explain what useful skills you can learn working on a IIGS that are practical today. It would be like spending months learning all about tube amps, and then trying to find a job as an electrical engineer; you'd be very hard pressed to find employment(save a few snooty audio companies and some Air Traffic Control towers), because your skills would be so outdated as to be useless. When you walked into any electronics supply house or opened any electronics catalog, you wouldn't be able to find what you needed to "mess around for fun". When you did find tubes, they'd cost 100x as much as an IC that replaced thousands(or millions!) of them. I can buy a complete functioning uC with onboard ethernet, digital and analog IO, etc for less than a single tube.

What better way to learn the ins and outs of a TCP/IP stack than to implement one? What better way to learn about an OS than to write one, even if it is on hardware thats somewhere between having a Bar Mitzvah and being old enough to vote?

How about doing it on modern tools? The assembly language used in the IIGS is useless today, hopelessly outdated. Your argument is akin to saying "here, learn Word Perfect for DOS, it'll help you learn valuable skills!"- except clearly it won't teach you ANYTHING about using a modern operating system, modern word processors...or even a fucking mouse.

Just How Slow

[Effugas]

I don't think people grasp just how slow the Apple IIgs was.

I, of course, didn't. Middle school for me was defined by the l'il bugger, minus about six months of its power supply choking if I did something excessive like use the floppy drive (800K, and _no_ hard drive).

I have fond memories of flaming people for using ZIP when an obviously superior format, SHK(Shrinkit), was common for the IIgs.

Yeah -- my 2.2mhz speedster had a better algorithm than a PC *giggles*. Right.

Seriously, though -- graphical web browser? For IIgs? GIFS TOOK AN HOUR APIECE TO RENDER, line by godforsaken line...

That being said, did that machine have a bad ass sound synth or what...took like five years for PCs to even come close with the GUS, and a while longer before SB Live became common enough to surpass the synth capabilities of the trusty IIgs...

80's music? You mean MODs?

Oh yeah, ProTERM made for a great Unix dumb terminal...

--Dan
www.doxpara.com