23 Dec
1998
23 Dec
'98
3:39 p.m.
I've met a family who would like to get on the
Internet to mainly do email
- but all they have is an Apple 2 GS. Other than a shell account (these
folks seem to be "stick in disk, run command written on disk, scratch
head...) is there, say, a pop3 email client and IP stack software available
for that beast?
Well, sort of.
To run any modern GS software, you need at least 4 megs of RAM and a hard disk.
These things you can get at alltech - www.allelec.com, and if you buy the disk
from them you even get GSOS 6.0.1, which is the most
current version of the OS.
Which you will need.
There is an IP stack for it that you can download from the net. Look for
marinetti 2.0. It does SLIP and PPP at up to 56kbps. Realistically, without
an accelerator you won't get much past 33kbps.
There is good terminal software that runs with marinetti called Spectrum 2.2.
You can get this from http://www.sevenhills.com/applesoftware/ . It includes
a copy of Marinetti. It does telnet and good terminal emulation.
There is a web browser that runs as a plugin for spectrum... *BUT* it's not
shipping yet. *sigh* I've got two people with GSs (not to mention my own)
who are waiting for this. The browser is supposedly pretty slow without an
accelerator, but it goes. No graphics though - the GS doesn't have the
processor power or ram to decode jpgs in a rational amount of time.
Oh yeah. One other thing. the GS in question needs to be at least a ROM01.
It will tell you the rom version when you power it up. If it doesn't, it's a
rom 0, and you'll need to go back to alltech and talk to them on the phone and
hopefully get a copy of the upgrade roms from them.
--
Jim Strickland
jim(a)DIESPAMMERSCUMcalico.litterbox.com
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