SymbOS 3.0 beta network edition released with new applications

[Prodatron]

SymbOS 3.0 beta with ethernet network support is available now. You can download the full package here:

http://www.symbos.org/download/preview-symbos3network-beta.zip



It seems that network support is introducing a complete new world for a multitasking environment on a 8bit Z80 machines. The amount of possibilities is still crazy and so we have quite a lot of new apps, which have been added during the last weeks.






The package includes the following:

SYMBOS 3.0 BETA NETWORK RELEASE

What is included

BASE SOFTWARE
- SymbOS 3.0 beta
- Control Panel
- SymShell 2.0 beta

NETWORK DAEMON
- DenYoNet driver
- Localhost driver

GUI APPLICATIONS DEVELOPED WITH UNIFY
- Battleship
- Symple messenger

SYMSHELL BASED APPLICATIONS
- SymTel
- WGet
- NsLookUp
- NetStat
- Nettest

For more information please read the included #readme.txt.

[Dizrythmia]

Forget Splatoon! Now I want to upgrade my CPC & play Battleships online. It genuinely looks like it would be great fun with the messaging window open for real time discussion. You can't chat in Splatoon anyway!

[FloppySoftware]

These are good news! Congratulations! 

[ronaldo]

@Prodatron: This is release 3.0. beta. You are almost reaching version 3.1., which should be the first to hit the masses on the market (as it did for Windows ). And you almost have 3.11 for work groups .

Incredible, man. Excelent job

[TFM]

Which hardware do you use for network access? Where can it be bought?

[Apollo]

Looking forward to try it when I have some time.... Congrats to this milestone!

[Poliander]

Just in time, I made it yesterday to set up SymbOS 2.1 properly on my 664/X-MEM/X-MASS hardware - works very good so far. *thumbs up*

[CraigsBar]

I plan on upgrading my main symbos setup to v3 tonight. Bring on the Ethernet card, either standalone or minibooster add-on.

[Joseman]

This 2 months i'll be very busy and far of my cpc, and waiting for Justcpc too.

When i have time and justcpc, i'll try symbos 3.0 and unify of course!

[TFM]

I plan on upgrading my main symbos setup to v3 tonight. Bring on the Ethernet card, either standalone or minibooster add-on.

Did you get it working? Which network hardware did you use?

[CraigsBar]

Did you get it working? Which network hardware did you use?

After downloading I noticed that the main reason for me to upgrade will be the official release of the play city compatible SymAMP, and that is not included not much point in installing this one until a CPC Ethernet card is available

[Trebmint]

After downloading I noticed that the main reason for me to upgrade will be the official release of the play city compatible SymAMP, and that is not included not much point in installing this one until a CPC Ethernet card is available

I guess Prodatron could have skipped the CPC version since 99% of normal users on here know there is no hardware as yet. But consider this as motivation for hardware and emulator creators.
What Prodatron has achieved is pretty amazing if you ask me, even if it only works currently on the MSX machines. The fact I implemented the code into unify, and then wrote the messenger app in 30 lines of code in about 5 minutes, and we already have a cool Battleships game bodes well for the future surely? And when the CPC hardware finally catches up these apps will need no alteration to work - they just will

[Prodatron]

After downloading I noticed that the main reason for me to upgrade will be the official release of the play city compatible SymAMP, and that is not included not much point in installing this one until a CPC Ethernet card is available

Thanks for the hint, indeed SymAmp wasn't included. I added the preview with PlayCity support to the package, just download it again under the same link. This is still a preview, as the normal player for the internal PSG isn't included, so it's better to keep both versions.

since 99% of normal users on here know there is no hardware as yet.

That's true 

But consider this as motivation for hardware and emulator creators.

This is exactly the intention of this release. And with the localhost network daemon you are already able to try out all included network applications on your real or emulated CPC.

From the included #readme.txt :

NETD-LOC.EXE

This version of the network daemon contains the localhost driver. It is platform independant and can be used on every supported SymbOS Z80 platform. It enables a "local" network on your own machine. Now you can start server and client apps which are then able to communicate with each other within the SymbOS environment. It is not necessary to do any configuration for the localhost driver, all IP addresses and domain lookups are always 127.0.0.1 based. The localhost version of the network daemon is very useful for testing network applications with an emulator and to have all available network applications already running on computers without ethernet hardware.

[TFM]

After downloading I noticed that the main reason for me to upgrade will be the official release of the play city compatible SymAMP, and that is not included not much point in installing this one until a CPC Ethernet card is available

Sorry, to hear. Prodatron posted this:
SymbOS network support development


So I though there is already hardware for the CPC. Guess 99% assumed like me.

[Prodatron]

Feels very stupid to repeat it again and again, but yes, since march/april there is a new minibooster based hardware which enables ethernet access for the CPC.
SymbOS network support development Already forgot about these photos?
Btw I missed the part with "you can now buy it somewhere". Any sources? Pretty sure, that 100% of the CPC community knows, that it isn't sold right now

[CraigsBar]

Feels very stupid to repeat it again and again, but yes, since march/april there is a new minibooster based hardware which enables ethernet access for the CPC.
SymbOS network support development Already forgot about these photos?
Btw I missed the part with "you can now buy it somewhere". Any sources? Pretty sure, that 100% of the CPC community knows, that it isn't sold right now

If you can tell me where to get one I'll order one today. Just checked @TotO's store, no not there, not even on the minibooster page. So please tell me where I can get one.

[Trebmint]

If you can tell me where to get one I'll order one today. Just checked @TotO's store, no not there, not even on the minibooster page. So please tell me where I can get one.

There is no available hardware as yet. If there was I think it would be all over the wiki. TFM also knows this since the thread he points too the very next message is from Kaos saying the hardware doesnt work... And TFM liked that???


I think it was made quite clear that this 3.0 beta contains a driver for the MSX network cards, and otherwise Localhost, plus a lot of accompanying software. It will only ever be of true value to somebody that has a CPC network card or when an emulator supports a CPC network card. You can try things in a limited was using localhost, or even get yourself an MSX2.


It is a chicken and egg situation though... it takes something threaded like symbos to make networking worthwhile, and without that developing the hardware is of limited use. For instance the MSX hardware has no software other than that comes with the hardware. Obviously now it has symbos apps


"Build it an they will come" is the policy, and I think a number of people are trying at the moment. I have no idea about ToTo, but I hope so as he's one of the CPC's most talented hardware guys. It would appear that there is a market for the hardware


In the meantime while we're all waiting we will continue to develop software, and Unify will be out later this week so you can develop yourself if you wish

[Edoz(MSX)]

If you can tell me where to get one I'll order one today. Just checked @TotO's store, no not there, not even on the minibooster page. So please tell me where I can get one.

I hope that there is a network adapter soon for the CPC! as then we can connect different z80 systems using ethernet and SymbOS togetther!! That would be so cool! The cool part is that the localhost driver is already working in SymbOS so all the network stuff is already in there!

I'm the lucky one that have a network adapter for my MSX so i played with it and i can only say that it is so cool that you can do this with your old machine! I'm so glad that Trebmint and Prodatron did all this work! Al this seems so normal but it must take a lot of work and time to make this! Thanks for all this work! I'm very happy that this OS was ported for different z80 system and that there is one OS that works for all! Crazy not!?

[CraigsBar]

There is no available hardware as yet. If there was I think it would be all over the wiki. TFM also knows this since the thread he points too the very next message is from Kaos saying the hardware doesnt work... And TFM liked that???


I think it was made quite clear that this 3.0 beta contains a driver for the MSX network cards, and otherwise Localhost, plus a lot of accompanying software. It will only ever be of true value to somebody that has a CPC network card or when an emulator supports a CPC network card. You can try things in a limited was using localhost, or even get yourself an MSX2.


It is a chicken and egg situation though... it takes something threaded like symbos to make networking worthwhile, and without that developing the hardware is of limited use. For instance the MSX hardware has no software other than that comes with the hardware. Obviously now it has symbos apps


"Build it an they will come" is the policy, and I think a number of people are trying at the moment. I have no idea about ToTo, but I hope so as he's one of the CPC's most talented hardware guys. It would appear that there is a market for the hardware


In the meantime while we're all waiting we will continue to develop software, and Unify will be out later this week so you can develop yourself if you wish

I know it's not available, I'd have one if it were, unfortunately @Prodatron 's post stated it is available since April.

[Prodatron]

There is a working hardware since april, but no-one ever said, that you can already buy it, or did I?

[CraigsBar]

There is a working hardware since april, but no-one ever said, that you can already buy it, or did I?

If you use that argument, then there has been working hardware since the Symbiface 3. No one could actually get any of it, but it was working. Grrrrr

[Prodatron]

To clarify it again:
- there is currently no-one who is selling ethernet hardware for the CPC
- at the beginning of april Octoacte was able to do a simple Telnet session with his ESP8266 module, which uses the Minibooster for the data transfer; therefore there is a new and (for TCP) already working project, though the hardware-internal API wasn't completed/optimized; the hardware is quite easy to build, but at the end someone has to produce it
- KaosOverride is experimenting with a W5100 based hardware as well; this is the same which is used in the existing (DenYoNet) and in the upcoming (GR8NET) ethernet card for the MSX (yes, they even have two now)
- because of this (and not because of the SF3 from 2007) I am quite positive that there will be a working and available solution soon (this year?)
- Trebmint, EdoZ and me are only doing the software; we have neither the knowledge nor any influence for the hardware development at all - I think this is also quite clear, isn't it?
- the only thing we can do is to provide a platform independant system and an IDE for network support and a bunch of already finished network applications
- the hardware has to be created by someone else, and we support any project by our drivers and software - not less and not more

This all has already posted before, but maybe it's good to make a summary again.

[Edoz(MSX)]

SymbOS 3.0 BETA running Network/Ethernet TCP/IP - YouTube

[KaosOverride]

i'm waiting some AVR Atmega168 modules to make an I/O to SPI adapter for Wiznet modules. It's a bit dirty, because SPI will make some lag, but I/O (indirect) mode is a little buggy when managed from a Z80 and memory (direct) mode is a little conflict with memory expansions.

Well , SPI mode will enable the use of other SPI-only Wiznet modules, cheaper than the memory-IO-SPI module i'm using.

I said that SPI will give lag because SPI at 16mhz AVR is not fast enought to simulate a nearly RAM read/write throught I/O ports. 14 address bits + 8 data bits at 8Mhz serial data transfer does not fit into the 4 cycle read/write at Z80 4Mhz.... The Z80 must be slowed using the /WAIT signal, if I don't manage to work some kind of cache at the AVR...

[KaosOverride]

Just thinking... If I use the original PCW serial+centronic printer adapter with an 8266 serial to wifi, I can have TCP/IP conectivity at the PCW?

I'm still waiting for some hardware, 8266 module included, and I have a PCW with the serial adapter (And an rs232PC to TTL adapter ) This looks fun xD