Re: NadaNet 3.1 Released

[mdj <mdj.mdj@gmail.com>]

On May 28, 5:36 am, "Michael J. Mahon" <mjma...@aol.com> wrote:

> NadaNet was designed to require very little hardware to implement
> (originally none, or "nada", but Apple changed the //e so that a
> simple buffer is needed).  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.  ;-)

With a community as small as ours, it's conceivable that each
individual occupies a near-unique point on the "sub-interest"
demographic :-( Unfortunately this means that only projects that
extend the Apple II in very generic ways (accelerators and storage
adapters for instance) will have broad enough appeal to create
anything resembling a group.

> It also occurred to me that the AppleCrate made something of a
> splash, and, since it is a bigger project, the simplicity of NadaNet
> that made it possible is lost behind the apparent complexity of the
> 'Crate.

The AppleCrate (+ synth) has *by far* the greatest wow factor of any
project in the Apple II hobbyist world in my memory, and the only real
barriers preventing me from experimenting are time, plus an existing
backlog of personal projects. At the current rate, that probably means
I'll get to NadaNet sometime in my retirement :-(

(Of course, another barrier is having enough 'spare' Apple IIe
motherboards to build a 'Crate; I rationalised my collection and
probably want to keep the remaining IIe's 'intact'. If I happen upon
an auction for a large set and can bare the shipping expense, I'll add
them to (yet another) box.)

Without wanting to be in any way critical (at least for negative uses
of the term), there are issues with having CrateSynth as the primary
"marketing tool" for NadaNet. From an end-user perspective it's a
"passive" application; it plays at you rather than you playing with
it, and you can enjoy its fruits straight from your website without
ever having to build one yourself ;-)