Connecting the Replica 1 to the Internet (indirectly)

9 posts / 0 new
Last post
Offline
Last seen: 4 years 5 months ago
Joined: Jul 29 2012 - 10:04
Posts: 26
Connecting the Replica 1 to the Internet (indirectly)

This question may be a bit out there, but would it be at all possible to indirectly connect a Replica 1 to the internet? Perhaps by running a program on a PC or Raspberry Pi that parses text from HTML and sends it via a serial connection? Or is this just a crazy idea? Please let me know what ya think, and if it'd even be practical!

Dog Cow's picture
Offline
Last seen: 4 years 10 months ago
Joined: Dec 11 2008 - 16:26
Posts: 554
Re: Perhaps My Most Ridiculous Unrealistic Idea Yet: ...

There's a newsgroup for you: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.eniac

Offline
Last seen: 3 weeks 2 days ago
Joined: Oct 9 2011 - 12:54
Posts: 1352
Re: Perhaps My Most Ridiculous Unrealistic Idea Yet: ...

I have actually connected my Replica-1 and my Briel Altair (I sold it since my real Altair is more fun to me) to the internet using a lantronix box. Maybe not the way you were intending... I was able to telnet from a remote machine (my iPad) to the vintage machine who just saw a serial connection. I did have a VPN setup though to make sure no one could get into my firewall.

On my Apple II, I have played around with using the lantronix box to actually go to websites, though they can be ugly in all HTML and I have to do some pretty low level things as the Apple II just thinks it's talking to a modem, and I have to "be" the browser manually.

Cheers,
Corey

Offline
Last seen: 4 years 5 months ago
Joined: Jul 29 2012 - 10:04
Posts: 26
Re: Perhaps My Most Ridiculous Unrealistic Idea Yet: ...

Could you connect the Replica 1 to a webpage similar to how you did with your Apple II? And when you connected your Replica 1, did you plug it into your modem or router to connect?

Offline
Last seen: 3 weeks 2 days ago
Joined: Oct 9 2011 - 12:54
Posts: 1352
Re: Perhaps My Most Ridiculous Unrealistic Idea Yet: ...

The lantronix box converts an rs232 connection to either an outbound or inbound telnet session. With the replica-1 you'd need a real serial port since the builtin one is just echo'ing the screen and taking keyboard input from the serial.

Fyi: It accepts AT commands and you send the ipaddress and port instead of the phone number when it does outbound modem emulation.

Cheers,
Corey

Offline
Last seen: 4 years 5 months ago
Joined: Jul 29 2012 - 10:04
Posts: 26
Re: Perhaps My Most Ridiculous Unrealistic Idea Yet: ...

Ok that would take a lot of work to configure then. How did you manage to telnet from your iPad to the Replica 1? And were you able to send data from the iPad to the Replica 1, or vice versa?

Offline
Last seen: 3 weeks 2 days ago
Joined: Oct 9 2011 - 12:54
Posts: 1352
Re: Perhaps My Most Ridiculous Unrealistic Idea Yet: ...

When I first got the lantronix box. I kinda tried it on everything.

So since I happen to have an iPad telnet app I use for work, It was the logical choice to play with. Its not good for transfering data, for that I tried telnet on my Mac and with my PC using putty, but it sent the data too fast for either the replica-1 or the altair micro. I would up as a test, hacking/writing up a custom telnet client that operated "slowly" and it worked. Not sure if I still have a copy it was a rough test.

As a disclaimer, my Briel is mostly kept in an anti static bag. Even with all my crazy plexiglass cases I never made one for the Briel, though I did intend to. I do most of my apple-1 development on my 8k system since the Briel doesn't operate 100% like the real thing and I like making the hardware do weird things like music out of the cassette port. Also since I do software at work, I rather hardware hack on my spare time if I can.

Cheers,
Corey

Offline
Last seen: 4 years 5 months ago
Joined: Jul 29 2012 - 10:04
Posts: 26
Re: Perhaps My Most Ridiculous Unrealistic Idea Yet: ...

Ok thanks you've been extremely helpful. I have some ideas to mess around with now, thanks for the help! :mac:

Offline
Last seen: 9 years 10 months ago
Joined: Aug 3 2011 - 07:50
Posts: 33
Re: Perhaps My Most Ridiculous Unrealistic Idea Yet: ...

Keep in mind that an Apple II can fairly competently run Contiki. The Apple-1 (and Replica 1) uses the same CPU, at damn near the same clock speed.

You may say that there's not enough RAM, but given that you're using a Replica 1, you've got a good portion of the RAM, too, and importantly, video doesn't take any of the Apple-1's RAM. When you don't need the "G"UI libraries, the mouse handling, etc., etc., you can save some RAM there, too.

Then it's just a matter of making an Uther1, to get ethernet.

Oh, and there's always slapping some more RAM on the expansion bus if needed. The CFFA1 gives you some, too.

Log in or register to post comments