Video: C Programming on System 6 - Intro

I've been writing an IMAP client for and on my Mac 512Ke over the past many weeks. Taking inspiration from Andreas Kling's excellent YouTube videos documenting his development of the Serenity operating system, I thought I'd start screencasting some of my work.

This video is the first of hopefully many and presents a quick introduction to System 6, HFS resource forks, THINK C 5.0, and a look at some of the progress of my IMAP client so far.

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Cidco MailStation as a Z80 Development Platform

The Cidco MailStation is a series of dedicated e-mail terminals sold in the 2000s as simple, standalone devices for people to use to send and receive e-mail over dialup modem. While their POP3 e-mail functionality is of little use today, the hardware is a neat Z80 development platform that integrates a 320x128 LCD, full QWERTY keyboard, and an internal modem.

After purchasing one (ok, four) on eBay some months ago, I've learned enough about the platform to write my own software that allows it to be a terminal for accessing BBSes via its modem or as a terminal for a Unix machine connected over parallel cable.

mailstation on desk showing main menu

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Dolch PAC 64

The Dolch PAC 64 is a portable, rugged Pentium-powered PC from the mid 1990s. It was usually used (and can usually be found on eBay) as a "portable network sniffer" complete with multiple network cards supporting multiple media types.

dolch pac with keyboard unfolded on desk

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WiFi232 with a Macintosh 512Ke

Back in 2015, I created a BBS for Lobsters that worked in a web browser via WebSockets. After getting an old Mac earlier this year, I wanted a way to access the BBS from the Mac as natively as I could. Adding telnet and SSH frontends to the BBS was not too difficult, but being able to login from my Mac took a bit of work.

In January I got a Macintosh 512Ke on eBay and spent some time fixing it up. The screen would occasionally flicker and shut off, but banging on the side of the case would sometimes bring it back. Some research pointed me to the analog board needing some capacitors replaced, which has completely solved the problem.

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Creating a BBS in 2015

Although it fooled nobody, yesterday for April Fools' Day, Lobsters users that normally saw a boring list of story titles and links were greeted with a BBS-style interface to the site complete with story and comment browsing, private message reading and sending, and a multi-user chat area.

The BBS remains active at https://lobste.rs/bbs (you can login as "guest").

screenshot of lobsters BBS login terminal

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