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GNO/ME 2.0 Press and Upgrade Information
August 8, 1993 (Littleton, CO)
Procyon Enterprises announced today that they are now accepting
orders for the new version of their GNO/ME UNIX system for the
Apple IIGS.
Jawaid Bazyar, Vice President of Procyon and head engineer of
the GNO project, said "GNO/ME 2.0 represents a substantial
improvement over the original, which was in its own right a
ground-breaking work. In the past year since the original
release, we've listened to customer's concerns and addressed
most of them. We brought even more UNIX power to the IIGS by
implementing the most powerful inter-process communication
system available for the IIGS".
UNIX is quickly becoming the de-facto standard among operating
systems. Even operating systems which never claimed to be UNIX
compatible are rushing to provide POSIX compliance interfaces
for their systems. (POSIX is the International Standards
Organization's UNIX standard).
"This release reaffirms our committment to the Apple IIGS, a
very capable computer that many developers abandoned", said Matt
Gudermuth, President of Procyon. "Some people ask if the IIGS
is powerful enough to run UNIX, and many used to answer with a
resounding NO!. We answer these people by pointing out that the
first mainframe computers that ran UNIX were far less powerful
than the Apple IIGS. The IIGS is here to stay, and we're going
to keep supporting it with our powerful system software."
GNO provides UNIX features in an application environment that
runs "on top of" GS/OS, so that the IIGS software everyone
enjoys is actually enhanced by using GNO. Included as standard
with the GNO system are almost one hundred standard UNIX
utilites and some IIGS-specific ones such as print spooling from
text or desktop applications and a "shell-in-a-window" New Desk
Accessory. Full support for remote access to a IIGS via a
modem, and built-in ultra high speed serial communications means
that GNO is the perfect system for writing communications
programs.
"Communications is one of GNO's strong points," remarks Derek
Taubert, the individual responsible for the upcoming Internet
access software for GNO. "Because GNO does all the low-level
work for me, and gives me a simple interface to access it, I can
concentrate on the task at hand instead of worrying about
writing things like interrupt handlers".
GNO comes with comprehensive documentation covering all aspects
of the system, including programming the kernel, the shell, the
C and assembly libraries, and utilities.
For more information, including information on upgrade pricing,
contact Procyon at:
Procyon Enterprises Incorporated
Apple IIGS Software Publishing and Development
P.O. Box 620334
Littleton, CO 80162-0334 USA
(303) 781-3273
-----------------------------------------------------------------
New GNO/ME Purchases
--------------------
If you don't currently own GNO, you can purchase it from
Resource Central for $89. RC's phone number is (913) 469-6502.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
GNO/ME 2.0 Upgrade Plan
-----------------------
To upgrade your copy of GNO/ME to 2.0, send a check or money
order, along with your GNO serial number, to the address at the
end of this note. At this time we cannot accept credit card
payments; we apologize for any inconvenience.
It is very important that you include your serial number. If
you have lost your original disks or manual, and don't know your
serial number, we have records for almost everyone (the database
we were using destroyed some records. Hopefully we can fully
restore the database during the update process).
If you purchased GNO before the final 1.0 release, but didn't
receive a real copy of GNO 1.0, subtract $10 from the upgrade
price. No fibbing! We know who got 1.0 and who didn't :-)
A $3 shipping fee applies to all domestic orders (including
Canada), $8 for overseas shipping.
Full GNO 2.0 system, including all printed documentation: $30
GNO 2.0 system with only user references (kernel overview and
shell manual): $20.
Do not forget to add in the shipping fee - we cannot ship orders
that do not include shipping charges.
Send orders to:
Procyon Enterprises Incorporated
P.O. Box 620334
Littleton, CO 80162-0334
-----------------------------------------------------------------
GNO 2.0 New Feature List
This is not a complete list - there were obviously bugs
corrected, but we didn't feel it was important to list them
here. Questions about fixed bugs are welome.
Kernel
------
Now provides six Inter-Process Communication methods for
unprecedented power (signals, semaphores, pipes,
pseudo-terminals, messages, and ports).
Named Prefix support. No matter what your hard drive partitions
are named, every GNO system has a /bin, /usr, /dev, /etc, and
other standard UNIX partition names.
The serial drivers were completely rewritten to allow high-speed
throughput, up to 38400 baud, and hardware and software
(XON/XOFF) flowcontrol. They also implement the complete set of
BSD control functions that are applicable on a IIGS.
Pipes are up to 30 times faster than in 1.0!
Compatible with System 6.0.1 features and applications - all
standard System Software utilities (such as Finder) now run in
GNO.
Compatible with all of the ORCA 2.0 version languages, including
ORCA/C and ORCA/Pascal.
New fork2() call makes it easy to fine-tune parameters of a new
process.
Console driver now maps arrows and OA-sequences to ESC codes
that can be read through the GS/OS read call.
GNO now sends SendRequest codes to indicate GNO start up and
shut down.
Removed limit on number of user semaphores (screate)
Code optimization means all these new features only take up 20K
more of memory!
Support for TCP/IP and sockets is implemented internal to the
kernel
Shell
-----
Directory stacks save typing when moving among many directories.
Complete command, filename, and variable-name expansion - just
hit TAB to have the shell finish typing for you.
Better support for running scripts in the background
Command-line editor is now completely user-configurable. Don't
like the standard editing keys? Change them!
More environment variables for customizing the operation of the
shell. More options in the PROMPT variable.
New built-ins show all accessible commands.
Can now invoke gsh with arguments to execute scripts and
commands (for use inside other programs).
More built-ins can have output redirected or piped.
Environment
-----------
New installer automatically sets up a GNO system on any
computer, and creates default configuration files. No more
fussing with "rc" files to get GNO up and running.
Complete docs for programming the kernel, shell and programmer's
libraries; and documentation for the standard UNIX utilities.
The documentation is now indexed.
All applicable utilities now use the termcap library for
flawless remote-access support. gsh, vi, less, more, etc. all
use termcap.
Print spooling utilities for both text files and GUI programs
(like AppleWorks GS).
gsi - Graphical Shell Interface NDA allows you to run a shell in
a window while in a desktop program
Suspend NDA allows the user to suspend a desktop application and
return to the shell. 'fg' resumes the desktop program.
rz/sz - Utilities for sending and receiving files via X,Y, and
ZModem protocols; these all work in the background!
copycat - a dumb terminal with some not-so-dumb features for
quick modem use.
Password-protected logins with multiple user accounts, and
library routines to help programmers access user information.
'ls' utility is restartable and much faster.
'launch' command allows you to run a ProDOS 8 (or other
incompatible) program and return directly to GNO without going
through another program launcher.
GNO Snooper CDA can now kill processes.
Replacement ORCALIB C library that better works with GNO.
Even better HFS and AppleShare support.
More than twice as many standard utilities as version 1.0.
--
Jawaid Bazyar | Ask me about the GNO Multitasking Environment
Procyon, Inc. | for the Apple IIgs!
bazyar@cs.uiuc.edu | P.O Box 620334
--Apple II Forever!-- | Littleton, CO 80162-0334 (303) 781-3273