Re: Networking Apple II'ss with each other and for Internet?

[Michael Engel <engel@informatik.uni-siegen.de>]

Michael J. Mahon <mjmahon@aol.com> wrote:
[Apple II networking]
: I made the same observation in '96, and in April of that year developed
: a set of assembler routines that would permit up to 16 computers to
: be bussed together through a game port annunciator/pushbutton
: connection.  It functions much like Ethernet, but at TTL levels and
: software speeds.  Synchronization is by means of a software "digital
: PLL" and timing is "trimmed" on each byte transferred.  Maximum
: packet length is 256 bytes, plus header.

Whow, we did sth. similar in the mid-80s but we used a token-ring 
like procotol (and only had 4 Apple IIeuroplus). Unfortunately, I 
can't find the code :-(. But I still have one of the Apples ;).

: Raw signalling speed--implemented entirely in software running at
: the standard (approx. 1MHz) Apple II speed--is 72.89 kilobits/sec.
: With framing overhead, this works out to about 7K bytes/sec.

Great, I think our protocol was quite a bit slower. About 20-30 kbit/sec
IIRC.

: I have all the basic media-level protocols working (arbitration,
: collision detection and backoff, error checking, retry) and did the
: beginning of some client/server-type protocols to move chunks of
: memory from one machine to another, execute commands on a
: remote machine, etc.

Whow. We implemented a primitive sort of file sharing but not a lot
more.

: I've been wanting to get back to it for a couple of years, just for
: the fun of it (and to create a retro-net of a dozen Apple II's doing
: a distributed computation!  ;-)

Yeah, Apple II's were much more fun than all that modern stuff is...

: If anyone is interested, I wouldn't mind sharing the code I've
: developed.  It might be a springboard for someone with more
: interest in the higher-level protocols.

I'd really like to see how you implemented it.

regards,
	Michael
-- 
Michael Engel	(engel@informatik.uni-siegen.de)