[Color Computer] Re:[coco] www on coco

[L. Curtis Boyle]

On Thu, 09 Nov 2006 12:21:41 -0600, Tad Burnett <tburnett at vermontel.net>  
wrote:

> Can you find an ISP that will talk to you using the slow baud and packet
> size...
> Are you willing to pay long distance charges
>  to reach it...
>
> How about the idea of using a PC at your location to serve as a link  
> between
> a DSL internet and a CoCo ..
> PC could also be used as a mass storage device to connect to a plane Jane
> CoCo through the tape drive port...
>
> Instead of hard ware changes to the CoCo that only a few would try
> software could be written and shared by many....
> Tad
>

     That's not a bad idea, although I am suprised that one would need long  
distance to contact a modem based ISP... here in Canada, pretty well all  
ISP's have both (especially for rural areas, where you can't get  
broadband).
     I know Mark's Superboard is supposed to have a TCP/IP hardware chip on  
it that handles the packet handling, so that would make things much easier  
(I believe it even includes the outside PPP layer as well), as well as  
some of the protocols within TCP/IP (FTP, etc.), but that would only  
appeal to the hardcore hackers who don't mind soldering inside of their  
machines (I would have to get someone to do that for me... my soldering  
skills suck).
    The only problem with hosting on a local PC is that one would have to  
make it cross platform to cover all of the Coco users who also have a  
"main" PC... you would have to write for Windows, Linux and OS X.
     The other thing is that since Contiki is on a C-64 (an inferior  
machine to a Coco 3), and they did it, is that there is the challenge of  
getting it to work on a Coco... which is the reason a lot of us did a lot  
of the stuff for the Coco and OS9 over the last 2 decades.

-- 
L. Curtis Boyle