fujinet #FujiNet - a WIP SIO Network Adapter for the Atari 8-bit

[Fierodoug5]

That seems to have fixed it, Espressif32 was one version out of date.

Thanx!

[jamm]

Surprised that that would cause that particular error, but glad it's fixed!

 

[tschak909]

[Fierodoug5]

Yup, got both my homemade ESP32 Wroom units up to current version 0.1.5f1b883f. 

Will run all the fujinet tests again over the weekend

Thanx All

[+DrVenkman]

Total aside here, but I adore the dots show up if you use the Epson 80 driver and print a text file to PDF.

 

[+DrVenkman]

So hey - just out of curiosity, do you guys - @tschak909, @jamm, @mozzwald - plan to post here whenever you've got new builds ready for people to use and test? I peeked at the Github repos and see that you guys have been actively working on stuff in recent days and I presume you'll keep at it until you're happy that it all works the way you want it to, and all the still-undone features are implemented. It's just not clear if you'll be doing builds weekly, monthly or just whenever you've implemented or expanded any particular feature.

 

***

Now my impressions ...  

 

As for the overall state of the device after having it in use for a week, I'm pretty satisfied with what's there. P: device implementation is fantastic. I love it. The N: device is incredibly cool and potentially useful in fundamental ways that are not necessarily obvious at first blush. Being able to save and load standalone files - independent of the ATR "container" - on any arbitrary folder on any Host via the little TNFS server program - is really great.  

Similarly, ATR loading locally from the SD card or though the wifi interface basically just works, with the mount limits of filename length and the limited number of files which can be browsed within a folder. Get those things expanded and enhanced and that feature will be basically complete and marked as "Done!"

 

Then there are the things yet to be implemented, and those strike me as falling into either "easy" or "hard" categories. "Easy" should include XEX loading - that's something already implemented in other open-source code (e.g., RespeQt, the SDrive-MAX source code) and basically every emulator. Similarly, ordinary cassette .CAS files should be pretty easy as these things go - just read the blocks off the network or SD card and spit them back out to the Atari every so many seconds. Tubo-cassette stuff might be more complicated, along with secondary audio file support. But a simple .CAS loader should be straightforward (again, there's code in RespeQt and the SDrive-MAX code already that can be examined).  So that's the "Easy" category.

 

The "hard" category has to include  ATX support, though again at least the work done in the last couple years to extend RespeQt in this regard can be explored. I'm sure the team has an understanding of how this will be handled, so I'm not concerned.

 

***

All in all, once file browsing is expanded and improved, and the "Easy" category of file support added, this thing will be ready for Prime Time. ATX support, turbo-.CAS loading, secondary audio, etc. will all be "great to have" bonuses, but not really necessary for most people to use the device every day for 95% of what they want to do.

[mozzwald]

8 minutes ago, DrVenkman said:

So hey - just out of curiosity, do you guys - @tschak909, @jamm, @mozzwald - plan to post here whenever you've got new builds ready for people to use and test? I peeked at the Github repos and see that you guys have been actively working on stuff in recent days and I presume you'll keep at it until you're happy that it all works the way you want it to, and all the still-undone features are implemented. It's just not clear if you'll be doing builds weekly, monthly or just whenever you've implemented or expanded any particular feature.

I am building the firmware binaries on fujinet.online when we get a new bug fix or feature. I can post here when I make those available if you like

[tschak909]

Yup, and my current focus right now has been drastically rewriting config. I'm about 50% done, and one can follow what i'm doing here:

https://github.com/FujiNetWIFI/fujinet-config/tree/rewrite

 

I will be making a video on the current stage of the rewrite, shortly.

-Thom

 

[tschak909]

1 hour ago, DrVenkman said:

So hey - just out of curiosity, do you guys - @tschak909, @jamm, @mozzwald - plan to post here whenever you've got new builds ready for people to use and test? I peeked at the Github repos and see that you guys have been actively working on stuff in recent days and I presume you'll keep at it until you're happy that it all works the way you want it to, and all the still-undone features are implemented. It's just not clear if you'll be doing builds weekly, monthly or just whenever you've implemented or expanded any particular feature.

 

***

Now my impressions ...  

 

As for the overall state of the device after having it in use for a week, I'm pretty satisfied with what's there. P: device implementation is fantastic. I love it. The N: device is incredibly cool and potentially useful in fundamental ways that are not necessarily obvious at first blush. Being able to save and load standalone files - independent of the ATR "container" - on any arbitrary folder on any Host via the little TNFS server program - is really great.  

Similarly, ATR loading locally from the SD card or though the wifi interface basically just works, with the mount limits of filename length and the limited number of files which can be browsed within a folder. Get those things expanded and enhanced and that feature will be basically complete and marked as "Done!"

 

Then there are the things yet to be implemented, and those strike me as falling into either "easy" or "hard" categories. "Easy" should include XEX loading - that's something already implemented in other open-source code (e.g., RespeQt, the SDrive-MAX source code) and basically every emulator. Similarly, ordinary cassette .CAS files should be pretty easy as these things go - just read the blocks off the network or SD card and spit them back out to the Atari every so many seconds. Tubo-cassette stuff might be more complicated, along with secondary audio file support. But a simple .CAS loader should be straightforward (again, there's code in RespeQt and the SDrive-MAX code already that can be examined).  So that's the "Easy" category.

 

The "hard" category has to include  ATX support, though again at least the work done in the last couple years to extend RespeQt in this regard can be explored. I'm sure the team has an understanding of how this will be handled, so I'm not concerned.

 

***

All in all, once file browsing is expanded and improved, and the "Easy" category of file support added, this thing will be ready for Prime Time. ATX support, turbo-.CAS loading, secondary audio, etc. will all be "great to have" bonuses, but not really necessary for most people to use the device every day for 95% of what they want to do.

Hey Herb! Thanks for testing, and yes, I agree 100% with your assessment.

 

For N:, there are some things not immediately evident. For one, the FTP and HTTP/S protocol adapters can indeed read and write. e.g. you can WRITE to a WEBDAV host, it'll happily HTTP PUT the data upon close. Of course, HTTPS is supported. FTP sites can also be written to (when logged into appropriately in the URL, e.g. FTP://thom.cherryhomes:1234@ftphost.com/upload/FOO.TXT)

 

But the N: device goes much further than that. As a weird example, on a PC, you can do:

$ cat BLACKJACK.BAS | nc -vl 6502
Listening for connections on port 6502

and in BASIC on the Atari

READY
LOAD"N:TCP://YOUR-PC-HOST:6502/"

READY
[]

This loads BLACKJACK.BAS from a raw TCP socket, which netcat closes when done.

 

Unusual? Rube-Goldbergian? Yes, but it illustrates a critical point, N: is an abstraction for the entire Internet, to be filtered through a single device. As we develop more adapters, more services will be available (e.g. SCP/SFTP from SSH). All of the CIO commands can be used, OPEN, CLOSE, INPUT#, PRINT#, STATUS, XIO... These open up a world of possibilities for BASIC users, and will sure as hell make the 10-liner BASIC competition more interesting (this was a specific use case for @Savetz from the get-go)

 

Another point with the N: device, is that you can set a "prefix" to make typing and using N: easier (and in some cases, possible, where a program either assumes that devices other than "D:" can't do filenames, or assume that only 8.3 is possible, you use XIO command 44 to set this (or the NCD tool in fnc-tools):

 

READY
XIO 44,#1,0,0,"N:HTTP://ATARI-APPS.IRATA.ONLINE/"

READY
LOAD"N:BLACKJACK.BAS"

READY
XIO 44,#1,0,0,"N:":REM RESET THE PREFIX

READY
REM THERE ARE FOUR N: DEVICES, N1: to N4: BTW

For those paying close attention, 44 is the same CIO command as used by SpartaDOS. So funny enough, CWD commands just do the right thing while on the N: device.

 

And there are even more commands:

 

e.g.

READY
XIO 42,#1,0,0,"N:New_Directory":REM MAke Directory

READY
XIO 43,#1,0,0,"N:New_Directory":REM Delete Directory

READY
REM XIO commands for RENAME and DELETE also work.

The above commands work irrespective of the resident FMS's ability to deal with such concepts.

 

-Thom

Edited August 2, 2020 by tschak909

[Fierodoug5]

Since I updated my fujinet units my TNFS server is dead.

I downloaded the new TNFSD.exe for windows(windows10) and I cant open it. It tries to open and closes right away.

What the heck am I doing wrong?

[tschak909]

3 minutes ago, Fierodoug5 said:

Since I updated my fujinet units my TNFS server is dead.

I downloaded the new TNFSD.exe for windows(windows10) and I cant open it. It tries to open and closes right away.

What the heck am I doing wrong?

that's very strange, as there are now multiple running sites with the latest tnfs. ?

 

[Fierodoug5]

I can still connect to Fujinet and irata TNFS servers, just not my own local one

[tschak909]

Just now, Fierodoug5 said:

I can still connect to Fujinet and irata TNFS servers, just not my own local one

are you running from a shell?

-Thom

[mozzwald]

Just now, Fierodoug5 said:

I can still connect to Fujinet and irata TNFS servers, just not my own local one

 

6 minutes ago, Fierodoug5 said:

I downloaded the new TNFSD.exe for windows(windows10) and I cant open it. It tries to open and closes right away.

Any output on the command line? Sounds like a bad binary. Where'd you get it from and can you paste a hash of it (md5)?

[Fierodoug5]

got it from the downloads page on fujinet.online

[Fierodoug5]

8 minutes ago, tschak909 said:

are you running from a shell?

-Thom

no

[tschak909]

Just now, Fierodoug5 said:

no

please run it from a shell.

-Thom

[+DrVenkman]

I have that same executable running in Win10. I created a Windows batch file to start it, pointing at the folder I wanted to use as a TNFS repository, and then dropped the batch file into my Startup folder. 

[Fierodoug5]

8 minutes ago, tschak909 said:

please run it from a shell.

-Thom

Gonna need directions for that. Have no idea how to do that

[tschak909]

Run CMD.EXE

cd\wherever\you\put\tnfsd

tnfsd path\to\your\data\folder

 

-Thom

[Fierodoug5]

12 minutes ago, tschak909 said:

Run CMD.EXE

cd\wherever\you\put\tnfsd

tnfsd path\to\your\data\folder

 

-Thom

where do i type that into?

[tschak909]

3 minutes ago, Fierodoug5 said:

where do i type that into?

have you seriously never run the command prompt in Windows, before?

 

Start menu, type CMD, and windows will auto-complete.

 

-Thom

Edited August 3, 2020 by tschak909

[+DrVenkman]

1 minute ago, Fierodoug5 said:

where do i type that into?

I created a new file in Notepad that simply reads:

 

D:\tnfs-win32\tnfsd.exe D:\AtariStuff\TNFS

 

The first part of that is the path to where I stuck the executable, the second part is the folder I'm using to save my ATRs for the TNFS server. I then saved that as TNFS.bat 

 

Next, I coped that file to my Windows startup directory so the program will run every time I log into Windows.

 

ALTERNATELY:

 

Right-click on your Windows Start button and select "Run" - in the window that pops up, type the full path to wherever you stashed your TNFSD.EXE along with the path to your folder of disk images.

 

[Fierodoug5]

duh, its the same way were doing it just with a new EXE.

I feel dumb now...been a long hot day

Works great, Thanx

[mozzwald]

@jamm has added initial support for XEX loading! ? The new build is available for the flash tool and I have added a XEX dir with a couple of files to the fujinet.online tnfs server.