8 Bit Computers and internet

[Sean39]

Ok this may sound crazy.....

 

 

Well I know we have alot of great programers on this forum. So here my question and chalange. Can we make a 8 bit Internet

Web Browser that can get on the internet for such machines as the 800XL or 130XE even if we have to expand the memory in our machines to

a higher level....... Also in the September 1985 Issue of Antic they talked about getting 16bits out of an 8 bit machine this mainly was on sound,but who

says you can't do it with graphics also.......This is only suppose to be a fun subject,but who is up for the challange of making a WebBroswer for an 800XL

or 130XE computer????? Well I am just curious if anyone else has ever had this cross their mind, and boy it sure would blow some of the ST computer

users minds if we were getting on the internet with only an eight bit computer. Again programers around 1985 were getting 16bit sound out of the 8 bit

computers with tricks in programing,so maybe we can do the same as they did....And maybe we can do it with graphics too.....Have fun with this subject.

 

 

 

 

Sean39

[machf]

In order to access the Internet, you need TCP/IP - that's the quid of it. The actual browser is the easy part, I guess a port of Lynx would do.

[Shawn Jefferson]

It's already been done. Check out the Contiki project. Now all you have to do is build hardware and port Contiki 2.0 to the Atari 8-bit.

 

Seriously though, the days of using a text browser are long gone, IMO.

[Sean39]

Hi Everyone

 

 

 

I want you to look at this Web Site and see what is being worked on for a Web Browser.....

 

 

http://members.tripod.com/~morloc/page5.html

 

 

Take Care and GOD BLESS

Sean

[Rybags]

Check his index page - site last updated in 1999.

 

And, what Shawn said.

 

And also consider that even if a graphical browser was made, it takes the Atari over a minute just to render a simple JPG image.

 

Nice novelty if someone took the trouble to do it, the value of which would last maybe 20 minutes.

[DamageX]

I'm sure a TCP/IP stack and basic internet apps could be done on an A8 with memory expansion.

 

A while back, just for the heck of it, I went online with a Compaq Plus (8088, 640KB RAM, CGA, 2400bps modem) using a version of Lynx compiled for DOS called bobcat. So if it can be done with that setup...

[UNIXcoffee928]

An ftp client would be a better start, and a more productive use of time, as would ssh.

 

There is a LOT of complexity in a browser, look at the sources on mozilla.org to get an idea.

 

A nice project would be an open source Epson esc control code to html near real time converter (hit print in the emulator & the output appears in a new tab in your browser as html using all of the Epson feature-set), or an Atariwriter to RTF or Word converter if you feel like doing a bit of casual coding.

 

I've been thinking about the Epson idea a bit this week, and may do it.

 

A TCLet app 1020 plotter has also been on my mind. It would be like having a new graphics mode for the Atari that did 80 columns & vector graphics. As a TCLet it would also appear in a tab on the browser.

 

Really, though, if you want to code something, ssh & scp are badly needed.

 

 

L8R.

[machf]

An ftp client would be a better start, and a more productive use of time, as would ssh.

Yeah, possible FTP'ing would be an use better suited for the A8s...

There is a LOT of complexity in a browser, look at the sources on mozilla.org to get an idea.

 

A nice project would be an open source Epson esc control code to html near real time converter (hit print in the emulator & the output appears in a new tab in your browser as html using all of the Epson feature-set), or an Atariwriter to RTF or Word converter if you feel like doing a bit of casual coding.

 

I've been thinking about the Epson idea a bit this week, and may do it.

Now that you mention it, I also thought of something like that some years ago... in fact, I may have even made the A8 print to file, transfered the file to a PC via diskette, and then using a global replace to convert the Epson codes in the document to HTML tags. Or maybe I didn't print to file and instead what I converted to HTML were XLEnt codes... anyway, it should be possible to do it in near-real-time with an emulator.

A TCLet app 1020 plotter has also been on my mind. It would be like having a new graphics mode for the Atari that did 80 columns & vector graphics. As a TCLet it would also appear in a tab on the browser.

Good idea.

Really, though, if you want to code something, ssh & scp are badly needed.

 

 

L8R.

[doctorclu]

Contiki had TCP/IP stack, an internet browser (that was always memory deficent no matter how much memory was used... but I only had a 256K machine back then), telnet and I believe FTP.

 

I believe there were two versions, one to work with the Ethernet cartridge that Cybernoid had working, and the other to work with more 850 interface functions.

 

Honestly never got any of the above to actually connect.

 

My solution for now for Lynx browsing... telnet to a site using a Lynx browser. (I generally telnet out using a SIO2PC connection, a lantronix UDS-10, or voice line calling a local BBS and telneting from there.)

 

Grex.org was a good location for Lynx browser. I think they now charge a memberhship for that feature.

[Cybernoid]

Check my sig for this link.

 

http://geocities.com/vlastaar/a8ether/

 

It is in the works... of course it has been in the works for some time... but... keep an eye out...

[Urchlay]

Really, though, if you want to code something, ssh & scp are badly needed.

 

The trouble with ssh/scp is the encryption algorithms. I haven't tried to implement DES/RSA/Blowfish on an 8-bit Atari, but I bet they're too complex for the A8 to do in realtime. If nothing else, they're probably designed to work with 32-bit ints, which would cause a lot of overhead on a 6502...

 

You might be able to do an ssh client on the A8 using the null "encryption" method (dummy method, not really encrypted), if you're not worried about security... IIRC, this requires a small change to the sshd config on the remote host.

[UNIXcoffee928]

After a bit of web searching, there appears to be a quick & easy potential ssh method.

 

AnyTerm lets you do ssh via http, and the whole setup is only 37K in C++ bzipped. I'm going to take a look at it later. This would eliminate the security risk of using telnet, and really open things up for the 8-bit.

 

 

L8R.

[Urchlay]

After a bit of web searching, there appears to be a quick & easy potential ssh method.

 

AnyTerm lets you do ssh via http, and the whole setup is only 37K in C++ bzipped. I'm going to take a look at it later. This would eliminate the security risk of using telnet, and really open things up for the 8-bit.

 

Interesting project...

 

But unless I'm reading it wrong, the client needs to be a web browser with a full AJAX-capable implementation of Javascript... not something an Atari is likely to ever be able to run. Also, if the client doesn't support SSL, there's no encryption (you might as well use telnet)... and if you could get SSL to work on an Atari 8-bit, you could easily write or maybe port a plain SSH client, which would be a lot simpler than writing a browser with Javascript and XML support...

 

The C++ code you're talking about runs on the server... if you extract the tarball, you'll find the client code in browser/anyterm.js, which is 19K of javascript code (so you need a javascript interpreter for the A8 that leaves enough free RAM to store that much code, plus the data structures it creates while it runs).

 

I hate to sound negative, but I don't think it's going to work... I'd love to be wrong though, so if I'm being stupid, please correct me.

[spookt]

Really, though, if you want to code something, ssh & scp are badly needed.

 

The trouble with ssh/scp is the encryption algorithms. I haven't tried to implement DES/RSA/Blowfish on an 8-bit Atari, but I bet they're too complex for the A8 to do in realtime. If nothing else, they're probably designed to work with 32-bit ints, which would cause a lot of overhead on a 6502...

 

You might be able to do an ssh client on the A8 using the null "encryption" method (dummy method, not really encrypted), if you're not worried about security... IIRC, this requires a small change to the sshd config on the remote host.

 

I've seen some of our older HP 9000 series PA RISC boxes struggle with key generation / exchange so I wouldn't be surprised if it took my old 800XL a long time ...

[mos6507]

I think a web browser would have made sense on a 65816 Atari8 back when HTML 3.2 was standard and people weren't going too crazy with Javascript. Today you wouldn't be able to view many sites. I can't even get sites to look very good on my Cingular 8125 which has a 200mhz processor and running a chopped down Opera on high-color 320x200 graphics.

 

I first got online using a shell account with a VT-100 terminal program (FlickerTerm 80, fast character-based 80 columns) through a Black Box on a 14.4 modem. I think that's about all you can expect on the client side with the A8. You can actually do quite a lot via a remote terminal connection. It's basically a very very thin client. FTP, Lynx, Pico, Zmodem upload/download to the shell. I think I did that for about a year until I got an Amiga 1200. Not sure how you would go about getting access like that these days outside of using a PC running Linux as a bridge, which is kind of a pointless exercise.

Edited June 27, 2008 by mos6507

[UNIXcoffee928]

I haven't had a chance to unzip it & take a look at it. What I was saying is that you could probably have the PC's browser take care of it, and interface from the emu to the PC's browser in some fashion. As I said, haven't looked at it too closely, just posted right after I ran across it, actually.

 

The way to do it is definitely to use the PC as a black-box interface, giving it the whole of the workload, whether AnyTerm is used, or if any other method is used.

 

As I said, a browser is waaaay too complex to bother with on an A8, but generating plain html files shouldn't be too big a deal, in a text only situation like ssh, if this thing works.

 

In any case, if the PC acts as an encryption device to the A8, it could be handled like any other device from the Atari OS.

 

 

Gotta sleep right now, though.

 

L8R.

[Shawn Jefferson]

Go here to check out Contiki:

http://hitmen.c02.at/html/tools_contiki.html

 

My understanding is that Contiki 2.0 is probably a better project to port to the Atari 8-bit though. Each application (web server, web browser, IRC client, etc..) are stand-alone, instead of being multi-tasked. That's a better approach for the Atari, IMO, since we have (more) memory contraints than the C64 guys do.

[Sean39]

HI Friends,

 

I just brought this up as a topic to see if we had any kind of chance of getting the 8 bit computers up on the internet. The 800XL and

130XE machines have a higher chance since we can expand the memory on them to 320K or more......Well I know it would take some very

complex programing to get them up on the internet since most everything is 32 bit...Now some people are getting on the internet with 16 bit

machines. Again if we could do it this would just blow the Mind of all the Atari ST computer owners that we are on the internet with only a 8 bit computer.

Now the Atari 8 bit machines have the 4 voices in sound, but they found out in 1985 that if the programers combined two voices together the

atari 8 bit computers were able to produce true 16 bit sound. Now the disavantage to this is the atari drops down to only have having two

voices instead of 4 voices in sound. This gave the atari 8 bit computers that ability to have speech synthesizing that was quite clear... Now

if we can take the same concept for the rest of the computer we may be able to get 16bit processing in the rest of the computer. This is only

a thought,and I am not even sure if it could be done. With all the encription and JAVA that does make it harder to do. I not even sure if the Atari

can do the Gif,or Jpegs,or the rest of the stuff you find on the internet now a days......Again this was only a thought I was throwing out

there to see if any programer thought it could be done. It does make for a very interesting subject since some Atari 130XE are running

with 500K of memory and the 800XL are running with extra memory too......I know the graphics displays are limmited on these machines,but

I thought with some hard work that this could be worked around. Anyways have fun with this subject....

 

 

Your Friend,

Sean

Edited June 27, 2008 by Sean39

[DamageX]

Now the Atari 8 bit machines have the 4 voices in sound, but they found out in 1985 that if the programers combined two voices together the

atari 8 bit computers were able to produce true 16 bit sound.

No no no... You can combine two voices to get 16-bit pitch resolution, but that has nothing to do with speech. It was known from the beginning (at least to the people who designed it and those who RTFM.) There is no 16-bit sample playback on POKEY.

 

Rest assured, there are no secret 16-bit CPUs or graphics modes hiding in there

 

Anyway, I saw a web browser (Wheels?) running on an expanded C64 also. It was slow, but then it was more elaborate than lynx, as it had true-type fonts and stuff.

[Sean39]

Thank for that help on the Web Broswer....

 

How do you get that small picture next to your post???

 

 

Thanks Sean

[Oswald]

if we can take the same concept for the rest of the computer we may be able to get 16bit processing in the rest of the computer. This is only

a thought,and I am not even sure if it could be done.

 

you can do 16/24/32/etc bit 'processing' with any 8 bit system. it just takes some basic assembly programming knowledge. do your homework and read upon programming, etc, before coming up with "ideas" please.

 

to the topic: surfing on 8bit computers are like demos: cool but useless.

[Sean39]

Ok Thanks for the info on the web broswer....Also thanks or the help on getting a picture up.... The picture is my daughter.

 

 

 

Thanks Sean

[pepax]

to the topic: surfing on 8bit computers are like demos: cool but useless.

 

Here you can find something very cool but not very useful. See http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=127821.

Edited June 27, 2008 by pepax

[MEtalGuy66]

Even a 200mhz 32bit machine with megabytes of RAM takes a WHILE to load the average webpage these days, and thats if its just standard html and images.

 

Instead of trying to write programs to support services that were designed for machine-architectures 2 generations larger/newer/faster than the 8-bit ATARI (32bit vs 8bit,) Why not design an on-line service based on tyoes of data that an 8-bit scale machine can handle efficiently? Have you seen Q-link on the Commodore 64? Have you seen the "Jump-disks" and other disk-based magazines that were released for years for various 8-bit platforms? The data that these types of standards use could be parsed, displayed, and exchanged quickly by an 8-bit ATARI, and the material would then be designed with alot closer match for the capabilities of the machine in mind..

 

A service like this could be hosted on a fast PC and a custom "browser" client program could written for the ATARI. We could then connect our 8-bit ATARIs to the service using a multitude of devices (APE,Lantronix, custom PBI/CART based ethernet adaptor, etc.)

[+Sauron]

I think Metalguy definitely has the right idea. It would make far more sense to have an online service geared specifically for the A8 than to try creating web browsers and such.