The Contiki operating
system is an open source, Internet-enabled, operating system
designed for tiny systems and runs on a variety systems
ranging from the Commodore 64 and the Atari Jaguar to small embedded
micro-controllers. Oliver Schmidt and Glenn Jones now bring the
Internet and the web to the classic Apple ][ by their Contiki Apple ][
port and Glenn’s self-built Apple
][ Ethernet card. Thanks to Tim Haynes, a video capture showing an
Ethernet-equipped Apple
][e surfing the web is available
(9 megabytes, DivX encoded).
That is too cool! I wish I had a IIe to try it on…
my first pc was the tandy 1000sx. it had enhanced 16-color CGA and 640k ram. is there a browser for it?
I remembered my 1st PC was an Apple 2 plus clone. It was a computer which was robust, easy and fun to use.
Ahhhh the number of games our family used to play on it.
Great memories and a great computer
Probably never. Contiki is designed for extremly modest hardware (by today’s standards). It is useable on machines that were never intended to have a GUI interface or networking abilities. What that team has already done is pretty darn amazing (look at the list of ports). Imagine browsing the web from your NES (when it gets network hardware, of course).
Of course, the OS isn’t magical and can’t make the hardware defy phsyics–the metal is just. This sort of thing isn’t a replacment for mainstream OSes. It just something that I think is really cool, and it may give you a reason to blow the dust of the old IIe or C64 in the closet, if only for novelty’s sake.
Whoops. Ucedac and I must have overlapped posts. It’s interesting that a post in the wrong forum was still applicable.
Very cool to see home brewed engineered projects. Seems to be a dying hobby.
Where is the Atari 2600 port? Hell, they made a Duke Nukem forever port to the 2600, so why not this?
Have you used this as an embedded system? It might very well have less code than linux has bugs. Its probably very bug free because its very small and somewhat limited. It does make it great for modest hardware, and it would probably be great embedded, but have you used it on something?
That’s not to put down linux at all, because its a great system, and that fact that it can be embedded and still run on supercomputers is amazing.
Apple ][? Should that not be Apple II?
actualy, no, it was Apple ][
1mhz processor surfing the web? reminds me of the time i installed win95 on a 386DX-40(one of AMD’s better processors) with 32 mbs of memory. I could actually watch as the windows were slowly drawn on the screen….cool to mess around with but of little real value.
I like that idea!!!
yup, as gamma says. anyone who has an apple ][ will tell you the logo actually looked like that, opposing square brackets. we’ve got a couple in a basement somewhere…
yup, as gamma says. anyone who has an apple ][ will tell you the logo actually looked like that, opposing square brackets. we’ve got a couple in a basement somewhere…
Bizarre. I never actually owned or saw an Apple ][
, so I only knew it as being the Apple II or Apple 2. I came into the real world some time later with a Commodore 64. There was a computer you could get real work done with and play games as well! It was absolutely incredible at the time. Still is, and I still play the games…
I find these projects and ventures absolutely incredible. Just shows you that if something can be done, it will be.
“Still is, and I still play the games… ”
Dino Eggs and Fahrenheit 451…
early Apple II models did use “][” (the Apple II, Apple II+, and at least some (perhaps all) versions of the Apple IIe)
I think some later ones used “//” (Apple IIc and Apple IIc+)
The Apple IIGS (the 16-bit model with improved graphics/sound) was the only one which actually used “II” I think. (Its case was labeled in the same font (a modified Palatino, I believe) as the Macintosh models of that time period. The “II” was written with actual uppercase “I” and the “GS” was in smallcaps. I think the startup screen spelled it “Apple IIgs” though (as text mode doesn’t have small caps available) .. I’ve actually got my old ROM 3 Apple IIGS (upgraded from 2.8 MHz to 10 MHz 🙂 in my office, actually. As soon as I clear up some space I need to get it set up and running again. And I need to see if I can get an Ethernet card for it…
You can get Ethernet cards for IIgs and ][e Enhanced here:
http://lancegs.a2central.com/
no port for the spectrum though ?
I remember a version of pacman on the apple ][
it was so good it put me off playing it on any other system
Someone typed: “my first pc was the tandy 1000sx. it had enhanced 16-color CGA and 640k ram. is there a browser for it?”
That is a “PC” or X86 computer and there’s a Contiki port for it, see this link:
http://www.mbernstein.de/contiki/
Someone mentioned that homebrew hardware projects are a dying hobby. As machines get more complex it’s harder and harder to interface to them. In the good old days, serial and parallel ports and ISA busses were relatively easy to deal with. USB and PCI busses are substantially more complex; people are doing it, but you need much more education (and $) than you used to.
For example, if you want an ethernet interface for your antique or orphan machine, you could save time and money by designing an adapter between your CPU bus and an ISA ethernet card. But even ISA ethernet cards are becoming quite hard to find, and for the work of interfacing a PCI card you might as well design a new interface from the ground up.
And even with adapters, this isn’t cheap; I keep toying with the idea of getting ethernet cards for my old Amigas, but at $US100+ a pop, I’m hesitant. Not that I fault the price; I’ve designed electronics so I know how much short run cards cost to make. It just shows how much the mass market can drive down the cost of a PCI ethernet card when you can make and sell millions of units.
I recommend Circuit Cellar (www.circuitcellar.com) as an excellent magazine for anyone interested in hardware projects and minimalist computing.