[Coco] Internet via Coco

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 8:58 PM, Diego Barizo <diegoba at adinet.com.uy> wrote:
> CW Gordon wrote:
>>
>> Please excuse me if I'm asking a question that has been asked before, but
>> is
>> it possible to browse the internet with the Coco, and if so, can I connect
>> the RS-232 Pak to a cable modem to accomplish this?
>>
>>
>
> I don't see any answers (I might have deleted them), so I'll jump in.
> No, you can not connect a RS-232 pack to a modern modem and browse the web.
> The only practical way to do it, is using a PC as a tool, with either
> Drivewire or CoCoNet.
>

It's worth clarifying that neither DW or Coconet will allow one to
"browse the internet".  DW provides telnet, smtp, a web *server* (not
a browser), direct TCP access for outbound and incoming connections,
and virtual modems over TCP.  A couple IRC clients are in the works
but not ready at this point, and I've got a twitter client I keep
meaning to finish.  Both CocoNet and DW also provide a mechanism for
downloading content from URLs, but this is only a way to retrieve some
bytes.  Quite useful for mounting remote disk images or pulling files
across the network onto a local disk, but we are talking about
transferring bytes, not rendering their contents.

While it would certainly be possible to write a web browser using
DriveWire's TCP mechanisms, simply getting the content to the coco is
trivial compared to rendering it in any meaningful way.  I am not
aware of any projects attempting to do this, and not sure it would
ever make sense anyway.  Considering the limitations of the CoCo's
graphics modes and memory space, implementing a web browser might be a
fun project but it's never going to be something you'd really want to
use :)  On the other hand, things like telnet, ftp, IRC, etc can be
done quite well on the CoCo.  The IRC clients I've seen in development
look like first class applications that are every bit as usable as
modern clients on modern PCs.

-Aaron


> Diego
>
>
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