Re: Apple II Forever! Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

[Chris Morse <chris@sorry.no.spam.com>]

On 31 Dec 2003 06:18:56 -0800, julian814@hotmail.com (Ralph Glatt)
wrote:

>Not meaning to be a PITA, but how's the work on Contiki coming along? ;-)
>
>Ralph Glatt

Contiki is on the back burner, stewing, right now.  Without PPP
support, I really don't have any real way to test it.  I don't use
linux, and I can't run an old-style SLIP server on windows.

I tried to make it clear that anyone else interested in the project
should definitely move forward on it.  Any help would be great.  I am
learning about the tcp/ip protocol and trying to understand adam's
implementation in detail.  I'd like to build something useful that
would connect the Apple II to any dialup PPP connection.  As it stands
now, Contiki only connects through SLIP and I have no way of running a
SLIP server on windows - so I have no real way to test it.  The other
problem, as you probably know, is the lack of a periodic interrupt
source.  But now that I am thinking about it, I can contact some of
the other people that ported contiki and see if they had to get around
that problem themselves; if so, how they did it.

Last night I was reading up on ICMP and I've got a decent book on
embedded tcp/ip stacks ("TCP/IP Lean" 2nd Edition, by Jeremy Bentham)
along with some other good books on TCP/IP.  I had expressed interest
in building a tcp/ip stack on the apple II before Contiki was ever
announced; though I was looking at Adam's uIP implementation as a
reference.  As you probably know, that's what Contiki is built upon.

I'd like something that is useful, not just hobbling together a
proof-of-concept that's not at all practical to use.  That was my
ambition from day 1, before I ever heard of Contiki.  Recently, I was
looking at the LANceGS card and thinking about using that.. it would
be much more simple to implement, and more simple to "plug in" to a
network, but the price would be relatively high for people to get into
it ($155+S/H).  It would work though.

So ... it's not come very far.  But, also, I have definitely NOT given
up.  I've wanted to do this for a while, but always knew I needed some
time to understand tcp/ip.  That was my original ambition - to build a
tcp/ip stack myself.  That's how Adam found me (talking on the CC65
email list server).  But it was very early in the game (for me) when
Contiki came out, and I wasn't really ready for it.  Heck, I think he
told me about Contiki about 2 weeks after I had expressed interest in
*learning*, and Contiki was made public about 2 or 3 weeks after that.
Also, as it's a spare-time project for me, this last year hasn't been
good.. between moving to a new town, buying a house, and having our
first child, I've had fewer free hours than I used to.  To top if off,
now I am working on a book.  Though it's on internet programming, so
you can see where my interests are.

In conclusion, I'd like to think that I'll be much more ready for it
around summertime.  I'm pretty good at designing and implementing
application-layer network programs.  It's been a natural interest for
me to dig deeper -- into the tcp/ip stack itself.  From understanding
the implementation (of Contiki/uIP), to possibly tweaking it so that
it runs without a hard periodic timer, to implementing a PPP layer so
that I can both test it and use it practically.  I have a telco box
here, so I can simulate a real dialup connection -- Apple II + 2400
baud modem -->  Windows RAS/PPP dialup server.  So I can just say for
now that I am moving in the right direction.  Again, I invite anyone
else that wants to work on it to do so.

// CHRIS