[Coco] What would your ideal CoCo cartridge do?

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Oct 27, 2013 8:59 PM, "Mark J. Blair" <nf6x at nf6x.net> wrote:
>
>
> On Oct 27, 2013, at 17:41 , Aaron Wolfe <aawolfe at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Ethernet
>
> How would the ethernet be used? Is there a TCP/IP stack that can work on
a CoCo, or would this be something with an embedded ethernet stack and a
serial-like interface to the CoCo?
>

I'd take it any way I can get it, but easiest would be something like the
Wiznet module mentioned by Matthew.  There have been discussions on using
that module in a pak before but AFAIK no projects have gotten very far.

There is currently no native IP stack for the coco.  Whether or not it is
practical to create one seems debatable.  What we do have is a higher level
API supported by DriveWire that allows TCP connections to be mapped to
virtual OS9 SCF devices.

This is handy because OS9's unified I/O system lets one easily use these
channels with existing OS9 software.

The wiznet seems to be capable of providing a very similar interface.
Ideally we would make the API calls the same so that any client software
could work on either a hardware Ethernet option or via things like
DriveWire.  Since there is already a set of utilities such as inetd,
telnet, and httpd that work with DriveWire we would have useful
functionality from the start with such an Ethernet solution.