Re: Your favourite [Commodore] enemy - the Spectrum, the Atari, the CPC, the Apple 2, or the MSX???

[salfter@salfter.dyndns.org (Scott Alfter)]

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In article <3E0FB420.6C5A2290@bigvalley.net>,
Larry Anderson  <foxnhare@bigvalley.net> wrote:
>Yeah, that's kinda what I've heard over the years.  Pitty, everyone says
>how expandable the Apple II platform is (with it's card slots) but
>nothing recently is done or at least heard about it.  Never hear of any
>interent related projects, speedup components, GUI OSs, or other modern
>technology interfacing/communication developments.  Given it had one of
>the better DOSs, tons of high end development tools, and hard drives,
>etc., more so than most of the other 6502 systems, it sure seems to be
>lagging behind in retro support/represnetation.  :-/

Most of what you describe was done years ago and was available
off-the-shelf.  The only bits that have somewhat lagged behind are the ones
related to network connectivity, and for that there has been some relatively
recent work done.  An Ethernet card (the LanceGS) has been around for a
couple of years or so, but I found that an easier and cheaper solution (and
a potentially more versatile solution) to putting an Apple IIGS (or a
suitably-equipped IIe) on a network was to snag a Cayman GatorBox.  They
sold for thousands of dollars years ago, but they turn up on eBay for
next-to-nothing now (mine was about $20 and only needed a 10BaseT
transceiver and some PhoneNet boxes to get up and running).

As for accelerators...they've been around for the IIGS for over a decade. 
They've been around even longer for 8-bit IIs.  The IIGS has had a very
MacOS-like environment since its introduction in 1986.  Similar WIMP
interfaces are built into some of the "newer" 8-bit apps (a fully graphical
interface for Publish-It!, a text-based workalike for ProTERM), but many of
the most powerful (and popular) apps, such as AppleWorks, did just fine with
a menu-based text interface.  Most of the Internet-related stuff revolved
around logging into a shell account someplace, but Marinetti brings a TCP/IP
stack directly to the IIGS.

FWIW, I just got my IIGS set up so that it could telnet into my Linux server
(had to set up a telnet daemon first...I normally log in via ssh).  It used
stuff that's all more-or-less available...no custom software on my end.  It
starts with Marinetti:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/marinetti/

A MacIP link layer is now available that plugs into Marinetti.  With the
printer port set to LocalTalk instead of RS232, the connection goes out to a
Cayman GatorBox CS, a little box that was originally intended to make older
Macs play nicely with heterogeneous networks.  It's currently set up as a
LocalTalk-to-Ethernet bridge (so the IIGS can also share files via AppleTalk
with the Linux server (running netatalk) and a Quadra 610 (running MacOS
7.5.3)), and it can also provide MacIP service (TCP/IP over LocalTalk). 
- From there, traffic hits the LAN.  I telnetted into my Linux server and my
TiVo from my IIGS.  There's even a terminfo entry (appleIIgs) that
kinda-sorta enables Lynx, Mutt, vi, etc. to work.

There's also a webserver bundled with Marinetti, but attempts so far at
accessing it remotely have locked up the machine.  I suspect there's some
additional configuration needed to get it to work (like setting up a
directory with some files to serve), but documentation for it is practically
nonexistent...and I suspect it wasn't much more than a quick hack to
demonstrate that it was possible.

  _/_   Scott Alfter
 / v \  salfter@salfter.dyndns.org
(IIGS(  http://salfter.dyndns.org   Top-posting!
 \_^_/  pkill -9 /bin/laden         >What is the most annoying thing on Usenet?

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