[Coco] Coco Contiki

[Mike Pepe]

Willard Goosey wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 01:54:12PM -0500, John W. Linville wrote:
> 
>> I've never understood why ethernet is seen as a barrier to entry for
>> developing a coco tcp/ip stack.  90% of the code can be developed
>> just using serial hardware and SLIP framing.  If/when you get that
>> working, then adding ethernet framing, ARP, and an ethernet driver
>> will seem trivial by comparison.
> 
> True.  I think part of it is that the "ethernet controller" chips
> under discussion have most (all?) of TCP/IP implemented in hardware,
> so our poor little 8-bit doesn't have to actually grind its way
> through the HUGE mass of code that is IP networking by itself.  
> 
> In theory, we have SLIP, but I've never been able to get the OS-9 port
> of KA9Q to actually talk to a slip server at the other end of the
> serial line.  AFAIK no one else has, either.  Plus, the d00d never
> released his source. :-(
> 
> Another part of it is hardware envy.  If the C64 can do ethernet then
> then CoCo SHOULD, too. ;-)
> 
> Willard

True, but something to keep in mind: when this TCP/IP stuff was 
developed in the '60s, 64k was considered a huge amount of memory- and 
the CPUs back then were a lot less powerful than a 6809. A full-blown 
modern TCP stack may be too much to ask, but a selected subset seems 
within technological limits.