Lineage and features of RespeQt

[+Larry]

Can someone help me fill in the lineage of RespeQt?  I'd like to get at least the major contributions of those persons.  Approximate dates for the stewardships would be good, too.  Add to this thread, and with general consensus, I'll modify the original post.

 

Here's what I think I know:

 

Atari810 by Dan Vernon (Original version, included 8 emulated drives, 3X speed.  Last version 1.4d.)

AspeQt by Fatih Aygün (major contributions ???)

AspeQt by Atari8warez (major contributions ???)

RespeQt by ebiguy (added printer features and support for creating and reading ATX files)

[cyco130]

Long time not logging in here (but I do read stuff from time to time). This is Fatih, the original author.

 

The first version was called AspeQt and it's still on SourceForge (0.1 was the first public release). And this is the original announcement post. That's the start of the lineage Obviously it was heavily inspired by everything that came before (Atari 810, AtariSIO, APE, and the original SIO2PC): I did learn a lot from their source code (not sure I've seen SIO2PC's source though) but my implementation was original, it wasn't based on Atari810. I can credit HiassofT for teaching me obscure Linux serial port programming tricks and candle for sending me his USB interface and helping me out supporting it (which enabled us to catch up with APE in terms of raw speed). And the community was extremely responsive and helpful in making it the best open source SIO2PC program at the time.

 

I ended up having to stop working on it due to personal issues and Atari8Warez's volunteered to take over. Unfortunately he turned out to be not a pleasant person and he was banned from here. To my knowledge he didn't have major contributions. In any case, he was more a hardware guy and he was more interested in selling his hardware then writing code. In fact, I remember he tried to violate the terms of GPL to that end (he released a closed source version to go with his hardware). Then he wiped out the SourceForge repo and left. We had to restore it from our own personal copies if I remember correctly. So even if he did implement new features, they're probably gone now.  

 

Luckily others forked it to create RespeQt and took over from there (around 2015 or 2016). You can see a detailed picture from that point on in the commit history on GitHub. I'm proud and happy to see it's still the best open source solution after all these years

 

That's all I can gather, hope this helps.

 

[_The Doctor__]

Nice, to the point, with concise points of note. Thank you for doing what you could to restore it so the work could continue!

One day I hope it will be complete in the form that is currently outlined.

[+Larry]

Thanks, and especially for correcting my misconception that AspeQt was a direct descendant of Dan Vernon's Atari 810.  AspeQt has come a long way!