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Berkeley TCP socket interface for the Apple IIgs 226

Posted by CowboyNeal from the dusting-it-off dept.
Scott C. Linnenbringer writes "In case you wanted to do something cool with your fancy little Apple IIgs in the back room, you can use GS/TCP to implement a standard BSD socket interface, allowing you to connect via SLIP, MacIP, and soon PPP on a GNO/ME (GNO Multitasking Environment) UNIX system for the IIgs, now completely abandoned, open-sourced and labeled freeware. GS/TCP also comes with ftp and inetd, built with ORCA/C directly from BSDi sources (hacked, of course,) and a text web browser for GNO/ME can be found at the website."
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Berkeley TCP socket interface for the Apple IIgs More

Berkeley TCP socket interface for the Apple IIgs

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  • Man... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Just when you thought the web couldn't get any slower....
  • In case you wanted to do something cool with your fancy little Apple IIgs in the back room...

    What if I already have a beowulf cluster of them?

  • News Huh? (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This is news because the date on the picture is February, 1996?
  • BSD lives forever. And there is nothing that you can do about it. :)
  • That's nice and all but when can I get this for my Franklin Ace 1000? hmmm?
  • This is another one of those cool but completly useless projects.

    Seriously, if your reading this, your probably have a better computer than an Apple IIgs.

  • Kudos to those who pulls off stuff like these.

  • How about something like Minix for the IIgs? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by leereyno ( 32197 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @01:48AM (#6412972) Homepage Journal
    I'm not familiar with the current legal status of the Minix source code, but I think it would be interesting to see a port of it to the IIgs. I don't have any illusions about such an effort yielding anything of practical use, I just think it would be cool. The x86 version of Minix will run on a PC/XT, a system whose processor lacks any sort of memory protection functionality, with 256k of memory and a single 360k floppy drive.

    If an OS like contiki can be crafted for a C64, surely Minix or something like it can be made to work on the IIgs.

    Lee

    • Re:How about something like Minix for the IIgs? (Score:5, Informative)

      by usotsuki ( 530037 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @02:19AM (#6413058) Homepage
      Minix is BSD-licensed now.

      It's theoretically possible. The IIgs's CPU is a 65816, a 16-bit variant of the 65C02. It has 24-bit memory addressing (like the 286). The IIgs came standard with 512K RAM, not too shabby for 1986. If GNO can run on top of GS/OS, I don't see why Minix can't be ported to it.

      I suggest someone might want to download KEGS and a 65816 assembler, and maybe the GNO tools and try to bootstrap Minix on it.
    • IANAL, but as far as I know, Minix is almost public domain: you can do nearly anything with it (licence here [cs.vu.nl]).

      As far as portability, the older version of Minix (1.5) runs on 68k (Amiga, Atari, and Macintosh) and SPARC, as well as x86 (32- and 16- bit). However, the 6502 used in the Apple 1/2/3 series is quite a bit more primitive than even a MMU-less x86 or 68k. In particular, fewer and smaller registers means more swapping to memory, which in turn reduces speed and increases code size. The 16-bit vers

      • In particular, fewer and smaller registers means more swapping to memory, which in turn reduces speed and increases code size.

        That's the "glass is half empty" viewpoint. The "half full" viewpoint says that the 6502 gives you 256 registers with the special optimized opcodes for fast access to the lowest 8 bits of memory space.

        An obvious architecture enhancement for the 6502 would be to implement those 256 memory locations in on-chip registers. (I'm not familiar with the 65816, so I dont' know if they ac

        • That's the "glass is half empty" viewpoint. The "half full" viewpoint says that the 6502 gives you 256 registers with the special optimized opcodes for fast access to the lowest 8 bits of memory space.

          ...and the 65816 had the direct-page register, which lets you direct zero-page operations to any 256-byte chunk of the first 64K of memory. For context switching, you could set the direct-page register to a different value for each process and write the processor registers to the same (reserved) bytes in each page.

  • Heh... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Cyno01 ( 573917 ) <Cyno01@hotmail.com> on Friday July 11, 2003 @01:49AM (#6412973) Homepage
    This is good news, i havn't done anything with my IIgs but play Oregon Trail, Carmen Sandiago and Number Munchers.
    • Do you remember that weird robot maze game? I wish I could remember its name, or even enough details so I can search for it. :)
      • Robotron perhaps?
      • Are you talking about:
        Bolo - control a tank in a maze, destroy enemies and their nests/hives.

        Drol - cute platform game where you control a robot which is supposed to save little kids.

        Berzerk?

        Borg?

        Too many maze games ;).

    • Re:Heh... (Score:4, Funny)

      by smithmc ( 451373 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @10:19AM (#6415128) Journal

      This is good news, i havn't done anything with my IIgs but play Oregon Trail, Carmen Sandiago and Number Munchers.

      Gee, I hope those are legal versions of Oregon Trail and Carmen Santiago, or else this really lame rapper dude [kairosnews.org] will be very mad!

  • Not the only TCP/IP stack for the IIgs (Score:5, Informative)

    by The Blue Meanie ( 223473 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @01:49AM (#6412975)
    Any reason there's no mention of marinetti [apple2.org] in this article? Marinetti implements a TCP/IP stack for the IIgs, but works under the IIgs' native interface, GS/OS. There's telnet, ftp, AIM, and email apps already, and even the beginnings of a *graphical* web browser for it. And yes, it's open source [sourceforge.net] as well.
    • And at the risk of getting modded down for replying to my own post, I forgot to mention that marinetti also supports the LanceGS [a2central.com], a 10Base-T ethernet card for the IIgs. Don't laugh, it really works!
      • Yikes!!!! $155 for a network card for a IIgs? The machine itself is probably worth around $25!

        But now, I know what to look for on eBay... who knows, maybe I'll stumble across one. I have a IIgs, and a bunch of Basic games I wrote in HS that I'd like to get moved over to PC so that I can run them under an emulator.

        dochood

        • Yikes!!!! $155 for a network card for a IIgs? The machine itself is probably worth around $25!

          That's kept me away from buying one...fortunately, newer versions of Marinetti also support MacIP. Get yourself a LocalTalk-to-Ethernet bridge of some sort and connect through that. (A bridge could be a hardware device, like a Cayman GatorBox (cheap when they turn up on eBay), or it could just be software, such as LocalTalk Bridge [apple.com] running on an older Mac. You'd need a MacIP gateway somewhere...not sure what

          • Yeah, I bought a LocalTalk to Ethernet bridge about a year ago on eBay for $45, brand new in the box (well, it was old shelf stock, but never used). I unsealed the manuals to see how hard it would be to use, then the client I had bought it for (data migration project) decided that the data just wasn't that important. The bridge just sits there, taking up space on my desk. I keep thinking that I'll put it on the network and hook up some old Macs, but haven't had the time. :-(
    • I used my IIGS pretty exclusively while I was in college (1996-2001), and the biggest problem I had with doing stuff over the serial line was dropped characters because certain things would block interrupts long enough to lose characters, such as the system beep.

      I also spent many, many hours trying to get Marinetti to work. Our campus was wired with both 10baseT and for those without computers, dumb terminals connected via serial cables to the local HP/UX mail server. I had a friend set up PPP on his Li

  • And the winner is... (Score:3, Funny)

    by m00nun1t ( 588082 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @01:49AM (#6412978) Homepage
    Against some VERY stiff competition, I nominate this article for the coveted /. "Nerdiest Article of the Year".

    I mean, sheesh, more acronyms in that description than unwilling virgins on this site...
    • "I mean, sheesh, more acronyms in that description than unwilling virgins on this site..."

      What the hell is an unwilling virgin? All the geeks (aka virgins) I know sure aren't unwilling, they're just unable to close the deal.

  • Let's not rehash (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The TRS-80/Apple II flamewars. We'll just call it a draw, ok?

  • Apple Computer Announces The IIgs (Score:5, Funny)

    by rice_web ( 604109 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @01:56AM (#6412993)
    Apple Computer Announces The IIgs
    RetroSoft's Exclusive Look

    A motor-horse 2800KHz, 1MHz FSB and 8192KB RAM, all topped off with a beautiful, crisp, 2-bit (4-bit supported!), 640x480 monitor.

    Apple really hit the mark with this beast, even including audiophiles that needed state-of-the-art mono sound output, capable of digital sound processing (line-in will be included in future models). When we listened to the latest hits in MIDI, they sounded remarkably better than our IBM-Compatible BEEP in QBasic.

    Finally, the IIgs comes with a built-in floppy drive to store all your files, games, and, "most importantly music, " according to Steve Jobs.

    "Now you can take all your music with you anywhere, over 1,000 digital music files in your pocket. The new floppy has no moving parts, meaning a better overall product for our users. We've got a real hit with the IIgs."
    • Re: audiophiles,

      The Ensoniq 5503 DOC was actually quite sophisticated for 1986: 32 sampling voices (8 bit) with independent playback rate, volume and looping control, and programmable interrupt rates. It not only supported stereo in and out (not included by Apple) but _eight_ channel output.

      Granted there was only 64k of sample RAM, but people eventually figured out how to trigger dynamic sample swapping via interrupts.
    • Could you please tell me which type of sound output is less state-of-the-art than mono?
    • The Ensoniq chip in the IIgs was the same one found in the Mirage music synthesizers from the period. It wasn't bad, and *did* support stereo in/out, it just wasn't provided by Apple.

      Also, before you mock the IIgs for its floppy storage, remember that thing supported SCSI, so you could hook a *hard drive* and a *CD-ROM* drive to thing. Apple sold each of these as options. Not bad for 1986, considering CD-ROMs didn't start appearing as standard equipment in higher-end PCs until around 1990 or so.

      And not
    • The Ensoniq DOC (Digital Osciallator Chip) used in the GS, coupled to 64K of audio RAM, was the father of the Forte audio processor in the GUS (Gravis UltraSound) which was so popular back in the PC demo scene. I have framed my old, red GUS and having it hanging on a wall in my computer room. :-)

      And here's my GS:
      juicy inside pic [blakespot.com]
      outside pic

      blakespot

  • A "cheapest and slowest network" contest, anyone? (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You'd be ripped off if you bought IIgs-es at a dime a dozen. A linksys router is about 1500x faster than the IIgs. So, um, unless you're just really looking to win the "slowest, cheapest network" contest, I'm wondering what practical use this is.

    Checked my calendar-- its not Apr. 1 anymore.

  • GNO's Not Orca (Score:4, Informative)

    by jsanfroop ( 688600 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @02:01AM (#6413015)

    Well, what's this.. looks like someone has stumbled across some 7 year old webpages!

    One should note that the GNO/ME distribution does not include GS/TCP. Indeed try Marinetti [apple2.org] if you want to play around with TCP/IP on your GS.

    GNO/ME stands for GNO's Not Orca.. named after the Orca shell in which you could use their compiler tools..

    Not really worth checking out, unless it brings back that special nostalgia if you're one of the few who actually used this software 10 years ago.

    I don't think I saw a link to www.gno.org [gno.org] so there it is, go grab your GNO! You can find download links if you like..

  • Coolness! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Kaz Riprock ( 590115 )

    Now I can setup that anonymous ftp server for my 1 pirated mp3 for people to download! When will someone port KaZaA for me?

  • Eh? (Score:1, Funny)

    by brsmith4 ( 567390 )
    GNOME on an apple II? You must think we're fscking stupid or something. No way in hell.

    • Re:Eh? (Score:3, Funny)

      by Tackhead ( 54550 )
      > GNOME on an apple II? You must think we're fscking stupid or something. No way in hell.

      GNOME's Not GNO/ME. GNO/ME's Not GNOME. GNO/ME's Not Orca. GNOME's Not Orca either. GNOME's Not GNO/ME's not Orc*** STACK OVERFLOW ***

  • GNO/ME is a BSD (Score:3, Informative)

    by usotsuki ( 530037 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @02:15AM (#6413051) Homepage
    From the
    FAQ [mit.edu]:

    GNO contains components that originate with a variety of flavors of UNIX. These include 4.3BSD, XINU, and SYSV. It is mostly BSD. As of GNO v2.0.6, GNO has become closer to 4.4BSD. Work is in progress to make it as compliant as possible to POSIX 1003.1 and POSIX 1003.2.

    -uso.

  • I'm sorry... (Score:1, Troll)

    by ayjay29 ( 144994 )
    "you can use GS/TCP to implement a standard BSD socket interface, allowing you to connect via SLIP, MacIP, and soon PPP on a GNO/ME (GNO Multitasking Environment) UNIX system for the IIgs"

    Sorry, but I have no idea what any of that means. Either I'm loosing my touch with IT issue, or there is another level of extreme geekdom that I have never before encountered. Is this kind of stuff relevant in today's IT industry, or is it mealy the electronic masturbation of the great un-shaved?

  • Apple IIGS Scene (Score:4, Interesting)

    by feisar.de ( 688604 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @02:21AM (#6413063) Homepage
    "In case you wanted to do something cool with your fancy little Apple IIgs in the back room"

    Well, in that case, I'd rather go to Ninjaforce [ninjaforce.com], download some demos, sit back and enjoy!

    By the way, there is an IRC client, too.

  • KEGS (Score:5, Informative)

    by metatruk ( 315048 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @02:32AM (#6413105)
    For all you kids at home with nothing to do and no Apple IIgs I recommend this fine emulator available at:
    http://kegs.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]

  • What this brings to mind is.... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by teamhasnoi ( 554944 ) * <teamhasnoi@yahoo.cLIONom minus cat> on Friday July 11, 2003 @02:53AM (#6413143) Journal
    Why isn't everything for the IIGS freeware? With the exception of schools that didn't get the trillions of dollars that Bush put into education, who's actually using a GS on a day to day basis?

    I *have* a GS, and I don't use it. I emulate one on my PB 5300 (another limping animal that should be put down ;) with Bernie to the Rescue.

    With the exception of the pain in the ass of making and managing floppy images (which is infinitely better than trying to nab them off a IIe) it works great. I'm glad that this software is free, but this just illustrates the BS of copyright laws. Unmaintained or un-updated software should lose copyright protection after 10 years AT MOST. This allows dumbasses like me to emulate, or actually *use* the hardware I own.

    Like I'm going to go out and buy Karateka any time soon (Don't try to hit the princess, she will smoke your ass like a looter in a riot!).

    Seriously, If the publishers need $$$ that bad, keep the trademarks (so someone can release Rescue Raiders II ((Rockstar Games??!)), and dump the software to freeware so assholes like me can play a classic, learn basic, explore and compare the limits of software and hardware of yesteryear and today, and so I can finally find out what I put on the back of those 5.25 floppies.

    Oh, and not have to try and explain why Gemstone Warrior was so frickin' creepy-scary, and why the Beagle Brothers kicked ass.

    Remember, all the software you use *right now* will still be copyrighted long after you're dead, Apple makes the G69 with OSeX (things will be looser that way, I'm sure) and Bill Gates will either be hooked up to a machine, or *be* a machine (let's hope it runs on Windows either way.

    Good example - Cinemaware. Releasing all their old ROMs and images. *FREE* Defender of the Crown anyone?
    Re-releasing the games for a new market: Phones, GBA, PDA etc.

    Do more of that, or so help me, I'll grab Locksmith 6.0, and Copy II+ 7 and 9 and I'll do it for you, you publish-whores! Put that on a bun and eat it!

    • Beagle Brothers...

      I almost made it through to the end of your post before nostalgia hit me so hard I just had to make a post.

      Damn, I remember using that tool on the II+.

    • who's actually using a GS on a day to day basis?

      It's not on every day, but I used mine to write the software that controls my beer fridge (that software is currently running on a IIe with 1 meg of RAM and LocalTalk, but was written to run on something as minimal as a 64K II+). More recently, it's seeing use as a Morse-code trainer (decided to take another stab at that after reading this article [slashdot.org]). Could I do this with a more modern system (like the dual Athlon MP 2100+ parked next to it)? Yes. I alre

  • ] call -151
    * 300: ad 30 c0 20 ed fd 4c 00 03
    * 300g
    Enjoy!
  • This [slashdot.org] is definately faster!

  • Interesting business plan (Score:3, Funny)

    by Imperator ( 17614 ) <{slashdot2} {at} {omershenker.net}> on Friday July 11, 2003 @09:18AM (#6414555)
    Clearly, what these people are trying to do by developing for antiquaited hardware is drive the value up so they can sell theirs on eBay. But I'm on to their underwear-stealing ways!
  • FINALLY! I've been waiting for this since 1993 or so!

    I'm going to have to drag my //gs out of the closet--it's ZIPchipped to a blazing 16Mhz, with 16 phat megabytes of 256x4 DRAMs!

    GNO/ME was a replacement for the UNIX system that I always wanted back then but couldn't afford (or something like that.) My GS will now take a proud (but kind of slow) place next to my 14 linux machines.

  • Apple IIGS was ahead of its time (Score:3, Informative)

    by Senor Wences ( 242975 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @11:33AM (#6416221)
    I recently picked up a IIGS ROM 3 because the computer was so ahead of its time (and so I could play again the games on my old 5.25 inch floppies from my ][+). I continue to be amazed by the IIGS and its operating System GS/OS version 6.0.1.

    To give you an example of how ahead of its time this computer was: I am actually netbooting the computer from a Mac Plus running AppleShare File Server 3.0. No disks needed: the IIGS starts up over the network and runs its operating system from the Mac's hard drive. It's certainly not the fastest, but it gives me a 500 MB hard drive for my IIGS.

    Information on setting up a netboot network for a IIGS ROM 3 can be found here:

    http://www.mandrake.demon.co.uk/Apple/ltalk/iigs _r b.html

    Truly geeky stuff.

  • Too Much Free Time
  • Stuff that matters? Definitely Not.

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