[Coco] So, would you like a little Internet with your CoCo?

[Frank Swygert]

Wonderful idea! Why not just adopt the cell-phone standards, even report to the server that it's a cell-phone page? That would open up a lot of existing services without requesting CoCo specific pages. There may be a way to add something CoCo specific to the existing cell standards. 

Now we need a mini server box. Maybe a mini-ITX board. They sell for as little as $65 (no memory or HD) and fit in a single 5.25" drive case WITH a hard drive. An older laptop 2.5" drive would be sufficient, but a single drive case (something like an external CD-ROM case) might hold a 3.5" HD and the ITX board with careful packing. I'd like to see something like one of the small Linux packages streamlined with the Internet server and drive-wire or CoConet, so it's just a drive/I-net server for the CoCo, no screen or anything needed except for setup and troubleshooting. Maybe all loaded onto a USB thumb drive (I'm assuming the thumb drive would boot faster than the HD, might not??) -- turn it on and it's ready to go. 

-----------
Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 18:16:38 -0700
From: Steve Bjork <6809er at bjork-huffman.net>
(edited)
The Internet has gown with the power of our computer systems. Gone are 
the simple text pages that the CoCo could handle. The entry page of 
CoCo3.com is almost 500,000 bytes when you include the HTML, Graphics, 
CSS and Javascript data it takes to build it. A far cry from a bit more 
than a decade ago when most web pages took just a few hundred bytes. 
That?s why I?ve posted messages that the CoCo cannot handle most modern 
web pages.

We can?t turn the whole Internet back round to those simple days but we 
can take a lesson from mobile phones. They also had real problems 
rendering those big web pages on underpowered devices with small 
screens. They got around their problems by making their own version of 
the web by creating their own standards and so can we for the CoCo.

Their ?WAP? standard for mobile devices was design for a low speed CPU 
in the first smart Cell phones. These devices also have small screen 
with limited color. Sounds familiar? You can see the direction that I?m 
Going with this.

We don?t try to get the CoCo to use the whole Internet, just the parts 
it can handle. We can also create new Internet applications that are 
design for what our ?little system? can do.

The quick and cheap solution is to use a modern PC to handle the 
Internet protocol and feed the processed data to the CoCo via the serial 
RS-232 port or Deluxe Wireless RS-232 Pak from CoCo3.com. Since the 
technology is here today and working, a new server application could be 
written quickly. 

So, what could a CoCo do with an Internet design it? Maybe not view the 
main entry page of CoCo3.com. But view alternated web page design for 
the CoCo in mind. How about a live chat room for just CoCo users? These 
would be a piece a cake for a CoCo running the simple browser client 
using the CoCo Internet protocols.

Much as there are web standards for formatting pages we will need to set 
standards for CoCo web pages. First, the TCP/IP server running on the PC 
would report to the website that it?s interacting as a ?CoCo? client. 
This would get the website to create generic HTML code or in the case of 
CoCo friendly website to use CoCo protocols.

The naming structure for files for the CoCo standard should follow the 
file ?types? as the web standard. For ease, let us just add the word 
?CoCo? to them. A CoCo HTML file would be ?cocohtml? for example.

We will address other protocols or standards in later documents. To that 
end, a standards committee will need to be created. Any volunteers?

Please note that I?m already in line to help this project.

Steve (6809er) Bjork

-- 
Frank Swygert
Publisher, "American Motors Cars" 
Magazine (AMC)
For all AMC enthusiasts
http://farna.home.att.net/AMC.html
(free download available!)