Re: LZ: f-term

Subject: Re: LZ: f-term
From: Ryan Myers <rmyers@teleport.com>
Date: Thu, 3 Oct 1996 22:37:08 -0700 (PDT)
In-Reply-To: <LZ: f-term>
According to "Josh Franta":
>I just wrote you about not posting stuff like this to the list, but you
>haven't gotten it yet... so I won't mailbomb you, yet :) . Anyways, your
>idea is (again), not necessary.
>


Hehe... 


>The 85 can't do graphx, or sound... so all we need is a text WWW
>browser. And one exists already (if you have a shell account), it's
>called lynx. Just connect to your account with fterm, and run this, you
>can access anything  on the web. The same with any other program... you
>can run ftp or telnet or whatever. Fterm support vt100 emulation, which
>all versions/flavors of unix should support, so writing browsers is
>uneccesary. As far as people who don't have shell access, there's not
>much we can do, because writing a TCP/IP driver would be EXTREMELY
>difficult (again, we just talked about this a couple of days ago).
>


Why do we need it as it is.  These things are not computers.  In deciding
what you choose to make for ZS, you have to consider two things:


        1) Can it realistically be done?
        2) If it can be done, will it be high quality enough to work?


Something such as TCPIP or Netscape for ZS perhaps could be done, but the
screen res is so low, there would be no point.  And it would be dreadfully
slow; even with TI92 FTerm the max baud rate is 9600.  


>Also, a Zterm (its not called that, I don't believe) will exist... I
>know two guys who've wrote an asm version on the 83, and the other one
>is going to port it to the 85 (or I'm supposed to, I can't remember).
>But if you have shell access, you're set. You're comment "I'm shooting
>for the idea, not the execution" is kind of ignorant.  You can't really
>talk about einstein's theory of relativity if you don't know anything
>about physics or mathematics, and the same applies here... it's kind of
>pointless to make suggestions when you have no clue what you're talking
>about.
>


I think you just hit the nail on the head.  If something is slow or
worthless, why bother using or even making it?  VT100 emulation is enough
for me... I can run lynx and UNIX from there; what else do we need?
Anything more is overkill.


Example: MC Mik.  Great game by Andreas Ess.  More grayscale sprite
animation, with decent speed, and grayscale backgrounds.  And I must admit
it is a FUN game!  But the 1-level demo takes 20K and requires 3K free to
run!!!  I beat it and then got rid of it.
We have to consider that these are not computers, these are calculators,
there are limits to what they can do.  Until Mel Tsai gets his promising
microwire system running, I'm afraid Netscapeish programs will have to wait.


C ya,
Ryan Myers ( rmyers@teleport.com )
http://www.teleport.com/~rmyers/
"Canthus" or "Darren" on DARKWORLD / Twisted Fate


C> Warning: REALITY.SYS may be corrupt.  Reboot universe(y/n)?
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