I purchased a WiFi Modem for my IIGS (this one https://tempestfpga.com/) but am looking for a copy of ANSITerm to use with it.
I've been able to use Spectrum to verify the modem works, but it seems ANSITerm works with ProDOS so it would be more convinient - i.e., don't have to wait for GS/OS to load and then Spectrum to load.I see it was for sale for a long while, even found ads for it from the early 2000's in Juiced.GS. But I can't find any info about the company now - anyone know what happened or have current contact info?
The "communications software collections" on asimov includes a usable demo of ANSITerm:
https://mirrors.apple2.org.za/ftp.apple.asimov.net/images/communications/Communications%20Software%20Collection%202mg.zip
After 33 years it might be a little late though to try to order the unlimited version... :)
ANSITerm Telecommunications Software
For the Apple IIGS
Version 1.0 DEMO
Release Date: 11/11/91
===============================================================================
This demo is an actual, working copy of ANSITerm. You can call out to bulletin boards and services with it and use all of the functions that are available in ANSITerm. However, the functionality of this demo has been limited. This version is limited to 1200 baud only. Scrollback is limited to about 5 screens of information and the demo will force a hang-up after every 500 or so lines of text have gone by. File transfers have been removed, but the preparations are still active so you can get a good feel for how they work. Also, the dialing directory has been shortened to only 3 entries and changes cannot be saved.
If you like what you see and wish to order ANSITerm, send $69 (plus sales and local tax if you live in California) and $3 for shipping and handling to:
Parkhurst Micro Products
2491 San Ramon Valley Blvd.
Suite 1-317
San Ramon, CA 94583
Did they actually ever have a full version? There were some of these things where as far a I know the full version was never completed or at least never released. If there was a full version maybe someone has it and can upload it to Asimov.
This disk image only contains demo version 1. There is a demo version 2 as well.
Thanks for the info!
So I am having an issue with ANSITerm from "What is the apple IIGS?" where it loads up but keeps "freezing" on me. There are two counters on the screen, one with the current time and one with the modem's "online" time and both keep hanging after a few seconds and the program becomes unresponsive. Most of the time power cycling the modem or unplugging serial cable wakes up the application, like its hung waiting on the modem. I verified 1200 bps, eight (8) data bits, no (N) parity bit, and one (1) stop bit config in ANSITerm which is what manufactuer of my modem recommends as the initial settings. I've tried ProTERM v3.1 and it works great with same settings - I have no issues using the modem and dialing into BBSes.
I was just hoping for something that supported color ANSI graphics, and didn't require booting up GS/OS like Spectrum.
There is Megaterm 1.1, which boots from ProDOS. The only way I could find it was a shrink it image, which can be a pain if you arent sure what to do with them. So I extracted it to a new 800k image with Prodos (attached) and was able to boot it in Kegs (my real IIgs is in storage and not readily available). I was able to connect to Captains Quarters in full glorious ANSI color. This is as far as I took it, so YMMV from this point. There is a manual in the disk image, and you can delete mterm.data on the disk image to make it enter configuration mode.
kegs megaterm cqbbs.png
Thanks for the upload! At first I ran into problems with MegaTERM reporting "Firmware Error - Having problems talking to //gs firmware" but then after poking around in the IIGS' Control Panel Modem Port Settings, I discovered setting "DCD Handshake: No" fixed my issues and I was able to use MegaTERM.
Additionally, changing this also fixed issue with ANSITerm being unresponsive! FYI The "Communication Apps" HDV image on WHAT IS THE APPLE IIGS? has MegaTERM 1.3 and 2.0 on it - I'm going to attempt making bootable ProDOS disks of these.
I am wondering if I have a cheap DIN8 to RS232 cable from Amazon that doesn't have all the signals connected, and this is why I needed to turn off DCD Handshake. Anyone have a recommended cable or cable and adapter?
IMG_1599.JPG
Didn't know there were newer versions. Asimov only had 1.1 from what I saw. I did extract 1.3 and 2.0 from that hard drive image to seperate bootable ProDOS images and tested them both with kegs. I'll let you give it a try yourself, just let me know if you get stuck or just want the images I made.
So I'm trying CiderPress for the first time and running into some issues. I still want to figure it out before I resort to your images :) So I create an 800K image, extract the ANSITerm files from the Communication HDV image on "What is the apple IIGS". I copy the files to my blank image. I then made a 3.5" diskette via ADTPro.
Now I can use a ProDOS 2.4.3 boot disk in my 5.25" drive, and via BITSY.BYE I am able to switch to 3.5" disk and launch "AT.SYSTEM" and everything works great. But how do I make a bootable disk so I don't have to go into BITSY.BYE first? Right now if I try and boot directly from the disk image I made, I just get "UNABLE TO FIND PRODOS". So I copied "PRODOS.SYSTEM" from a ProDOS 2.4.3 image (also tried 2.0.3) into my ANSITerm image, wrote it out to a disk, but now on boot it just crashes and I get the monitor. I also tried booting the image with my BOOTI card and it failed in the same manner.
Any help you can offer on what I'm doing wrong? I had Commodores in my youth so this is all new to me. Thanks!
I wanted to leave this info in case it helps anyone else. I was struggling to get ANSITerm and MEGAterm to work - both would start up and would be unresponsive or hang.
I was reading the Apple IIGS Firmware Reference and it says:
"The data carrier detect (DCD) line controls modem communications. If you enable the DCD handshake option, the Apple IIGS serial-port firmware will transmit characters only when the DCD line is enabled. The DCD option has no direct effect on character reception. This mode provides compatibility with the Super Serial Card (SSC), which uses DCD as a handshake line."
DCD Handshake Enabled is the default in the Control Panel. On my modem, I only see DCD "Data Carrier Detect" go high AFTER I've connected to a BBS. So I can't talk to the modem prior to this, which explains the "hanging" I'm seeing on ANSITerm/MEGAterm. I think this is normal that carrier detect only goes high when the modem is connected? I noticed the ProTerm manual has pinouts for the IIGS' Mini-DIN8 serial port, and it shows two cables - one for Apple 300/1200 baud modem, and one for Hayes compatible modems. The difference is how this DCD line is wired up.
If I disable DCD Handshake in the IIGS Control Panel Modem Settings, this allows MEGAterm to work properly.
ANSITerm has two "handshake" options in the Installation menu (Open-Apple "I") - DCD or DSR. If I set my serial port type in ANSITerm to "High-Speed GS Modem (DSR Handshake) then ANSITerm works 100%. I had to unplug the modem just to be able to get into the config menu.
ProDOS boots the first .SYSTEM file it sees in the actual disk catalog. Note that Ciderpress always shows you an alphabetical catalog, not the actual catalog (at least I haven't found a way to make it show the actual catalog order). My guess is your actual catalog has a .SYSTEM file higher than ANSI.SYSTEM in it.
For example, this is one of the test images I was playing with to get Megaterm to boot on my IIe (since it supports the IIe, but only in B&W). I had moved the terminal program above the ANSI.SYSTEM program used by IIgs (this image also will not work as expected, as I forgot to rename TERM.RUN to TERM.SYSTEM on this partiular image). As you can see, ciderpress shows the wrong order compared to actual (sorry for the fuzzy 80 col screen prints):
Prodos catalog example.png
So you have to use a utility to manipulate the catalog order. Copy II+ has a sort catalog fiunction that will do this. Go into sort catalog, and highlight the SYS file you want at the top of the catalog, press return (a 1 will appear next to the file), and then press G for go:
CP2plus Sort Catalog.png
When you look at the catalog again, now that file is at the top of the actual catalog:
Catalog after sort.png
Note that the PRODOS SYS file itself can exist anywhere in the catalog. It does not have to be first.
Edit: I had quickly read your reply, and didn't fully digest it before I replied. So my reply is kind of off track slightly. I thought you had a bootable image but bitsy bye was kicking in instead of the terminal program. Basically you want an image that looks like the one above. As long as PRODOS is on the disk image and ANSI.SYSTEM is listed first in the actual catalog, you should be good.
Thanks for the detailed response! I now have a bootable ANSITerm 2.1 3.5" diskette!
I booted my 5.25" copy of ProDOS 2.4.3 which has Copy II+ on it. I copied PRODOS.SYS from the 5.25" floppy to the 3.5" ANSITerm disk and now its bootable.
What version of Copy II+ are you using? Mine doesn't have a "Sort Catalog" option that I found. I do have "Alphabetize Catalog" option. I tried version Copy II+ 8.4 which is included with ProDOS 2.4.3 disk.
IMG_1608.jpeg
Copy ][ Plus 8.4 is a pretty recent version and a good one to use. That's the one I use most of the time lately.
The "DCD handshake" feature of the Super Serial Card was included for compatibility with the even older Apple Communications Card from 1978. This non-standard use of the Carrier Detect wire dates from the times of acoustic-coupler modems and teletypes and was already obsolete by the early 1980s.
Before about 1981, most modems weren't able to themselves dial a phone number to connect to a remote service. The user needed to dial using their telephone and then switch the modem into the circuit, or put the telephone receiver onto an acoustic coupler. In this scenario, there is nobody for the computer serial port to talk to until a carrier is detected from the remote end: anything sent before that would just be lost into the void.
1981 is when Hayes brought out the "SmartModem" which had the ability to dial itself using the now ubiquitous "AT command set". There were other modems with self-dialing capabilities but its command set became the industry standard. Now things were different: the computer serial port was used for sending commands to the modem itself—not the remote service—for configuration and dialing. So it was inappropriate to use the Carrier Detect wire to switch the serial port on and off. Carrier Detect became simply a bit of information that the computer could monitor to see whether it was in "online mode" or "offline (command) mode" (which was its original purpose in the RS-232C specification). The SmartModem would also (somewhat redundantly) emit text on the RXD line when the mode changed:
CONNECTorNO CARRIER.It's also sort of amazing that in 1986 Apple included this ancient feature in the IIgs. Did they think people were still using acoustic couplers somewhere in the heartland?
Copy II+ 9.1 has the sort catalog option. Long story short, a lot of people say that 9.1 is garbage because the source code was lost after 8.4 and they had to rewrite it all from scratch and it has a lot of bugs in 9 because of it. I use 9.1 almost exclusively and have never once ran into any issues.
But I just use basic functions - file/disk copy, verification, catalog sort, format, etc. I'm not doing any of the bit copy cracks or anything like that. So YMMV. There is at least one other application whose name escapes me now that has a similar catalog editing function.
The other option is to just create a new image and copy the files 1 by 1 in whatever order you want.