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Apple IIe and the Internet

J

jimmieloveshissunfire

Member
Joined
Jan 20, 2009
Messages
37
Location
Hole in the Wall, Georgia
Somewhere I read that an apple IIe could get on the regular internet, but I couldn't find out how to do it, and what I would need. Anyon here know? I'd also like to know if it is still possible to use an acoustic coupler to get on the internet if I can find the one that was compatible with the Apple IIe.
 
I was finally able to get onto the a2retrosystems site... must have been down the night I tried unsuccessfully several times.

I looked into the uthernet card & the software seems rudimentary at best. For example, I read that you can send email but not receive email. It also seems to be a strict text Unix-like environment. If you're a Unix geek, that may be great, but for me, a command-line Unix environment is going back too many steps along the evolutionary trail for my comfort.

Getting onto the internet is the easy question - get a Uthernet card. What you do after you connect is another thing entirely.
 
Contiki on the IIe is a mouse driven Internet enabled OS... It just uses text to make up it's objects because it's very basic. It's not that difficult to configure and use.
 
Thanks for the clarification/correction re Contiki. It looked rather primitive to me and I thought it was text-driven. Still seems like it desperately needs a lot more work.
 
Is there something specific you had in mind? It's a nice but primitive system, resources are limited unless only doing a GUI or only doing a network stack, so you're right that things are going to look a bit less advanced no matter what. The second issue of course is what audience is out there to develop software for and what's the motivation of the developer.

Anyway, if there's something specific you're trying to do that's not being fulfilled it'd be interesting to see what your ideas are. Push comes to shove, find a 6502 assembly manual and make some free reading time on the weekends and see what you can come up with too :)

- John
 
"Is there something specific you had in mind?" My understanding is that it can send but can't receive email. Is that true? (Maybe I read it wrong.) If so, then I have in mind: receiving email.

"The second issue of course is what audience is out there to develop software for and what's the motivation of the developer." You're right in that there is absolutely no market out there whatsoever for such an application. But there are plenty of hacks out there who do these things for the pure joy of it, and so I am surprised it hasn't been done already. And since the Apple IIGS was supposed to be all about graphics, I'm even more surprised. Then again, what is currently available was probably written for the lowest common denominator, which makes sense.

"Push comes to shove, find a 6502 assembly manual and make some free reading time on the weekends and see what you can come up with too." I wouldn't go holding my breath waiting for me to do it! (I wouldn't program in assembly 30 years ago, and I sure as all hell won't be doing it now.)

Personally, I'm happy with doing all my internet work on my PC, even including downloading programs for my Apple IIGS systems. I have a CFFA drive in one of the IIGS systems, so its easy enough to do. Actually, I am most surprised to find CFFA drives for the Apple II - my guess would have been that there would be NO hardware development for the system... and I would obviously been wrong again!
 
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