Re: NadaNet 3.1 Released

[Jonno Downes <jonnosan@gmail.com>]

On May 28, 5:36 am, "Michael J. Mahon" <mjma...@aol.com> wrote:
> My hope was that many Apple II enthusiasts,
> having more than one Apple II anyway, would be enticed by the quantum
> leap in functionality and the low barrier to entry to jump in and start
> experimenting--with parallel computing, client-server computing, or
> what-have-you, all in Applesoft.
>
> Apparently, I was wrong.  Whether it's because it's a "programmer's
> platform" or because it requires some simple adapters for the game port
> (or maybe because I'm no good at marketing ;-), very few people have
> actually hooked up a NadaNet.  (Or maybe they have, and are having
> great fun with it in secret.  ;-)
>
> Or maybe very few are interested in experimenting with network parallel
> programming and client-server computing on Apple II's--which seems
> strange, since it's the modern computing paradigm (clouds, anyone?).
>

Mike,

I'm probably as close to someone can get to being your 'target market'
without actually being a convert (i.e. I have a number of A2s,  and
have fun developing network apps on the C64 and A2), and given I've
come close a number of time to experimenting with NadaNet but never
have, I thought I'd explain why I think that is.

Basically I think for someone (or at least for me) wanting to do
anything client/server related on an A2, there is less 'friction' when
using IP over ethernet. I suspect for most of us, time is the scarcest
resource, more so than $ or even RAM, and doing something with
ethernet means you get a bunch of features that speed up development:

- cross development environments (e.g. cc65)
- able to test under an emulator
- able to use a modern PC dev environment for the server side
- able to use a protocol debugger (e.g. wireshark) both in a real and
an emulated environment
- 'known good' servers to test against

So if you were after some ideas for how to get more people into
NadaNet, here's a couple, with no consideration as to feasibility, and
no over at all to assist with implementation ;-)

- a PC<->NadaNet bridge (preferably a usb dongle)
- support in emulators - this probably would require tunnelling
NadaNet via IP between emulated devices
- some public NadaNet servers (would probably also require tunneling
NadaNet over IP) that people can hook up to, say a file server or chat
room.

I realise of course that none of the above is playing to NadaNet's
strengths, but if you had those things in place, I think you'd end up
with a larger pool of people experimenting with it, some of which
would then go on to do things more akin to the original spirit of
NadaNet.

Regards

Jonno