#mastapple2c — Public Fediverse posts

In order to celebrate the first #MastApple2c user who is not me (hi @mediaarchaeologylab !), and because they hit a bug, I've released my work in progress. Behold, here is version 1.5.0, featuring:

* impressive 19.2kbps speed (instead of 9.6) !
* Mostly lots of low-level optimisations !
* an Apple IIgs port !
* Bookmarks (the last ten only, pagination's a bitch)

I also updated the explanations to detail upgrading from a previous installation. You'll find all of that at https://www.colino.net/wordpress/en/binary-release-of-mastodon-for-the-apple-c/

I have (very naïvely) replaced the Apple 2c IRQ handler with my own, and maybe it's buggy, but it now takes 700.000 cycles instead of 4.100.000 cycles to handle every serial card IRQ needed to load the home timeline on my #MastApple2c client.

And, BREAKTHROUGH, it's now fast enough to handle 19.2kbps (instead of 9.6) !
#RetroComputing #Apple2

New release of my Apple II things!
- the FTP client gets: 80 columns mode, a "Get All" files feature, and a file selector
- #MastApple2c gets fixes, CW handling, toot edition, a file selector for images, and optimisations
Both of them now function properly with multiple floppy drives.
https://github.com/colinleroy/a2tools/releases/tag/v1.3.0
#RetroComputing

The last features I added to my #MastApple2c client pushed, again, the binaries size a bit too close to the floppy's limit with only 6kB left.

To avoid having one single, enormous* binary that would not even fit in RAM, I previously had to split them into five binaries: one for the OAuth login, one for the timeline, one for the configuration, one for viewing images and a last one to compose toots.

(* by enormous, I mean about 100kB)

1/3

I have successfully tackled my HGR encoder problem in #MastApple2c, which was that it was hardcoded to generate color HGR and then downsample them to B&W. But on the #Apple2, color HGR has an effective 140x192 resolution, whereas B&W HGR has 280x192.
I present you much better* dithered B&W images !

*much better meaning twice better
#RetroComputing

Remember how I was down to 7 blocks (3.5kB) of free disk space on my #MastApple2c floppy? I was worried. It was really not a lot. I had to fix that.

Well I fixed that, added a bit of features to my image loader, a bit of micro-optimisations, a HUGE optimisation, and ended up with 31 blocks free (16.5kB).

I'll explain how in the next toot.
#RetroComputing

I have searched in my floppy box and found THE perfect sleeve for my #mastapple2c floppy.
Also I printed a sticker.
It's nice and makes me feel good!
#retrocomputing

I'm not ashamed of my image selection interface. It took a little bit of refactoring, but it is accessible at any time during toot composition. Handles adding four images with descriptions, and removing them (in reverse last-added order, nobody wants to overcomplicate shit and shift arrays).
#retrocomputing #mastapple2c

Let me proudly present you this HGR (High Graphics Resolution - this is state of the art 280x192 pixels of awesomeness) rendering of a rose, courtesy of #cc65 sample images.
It has been selected from the TUI of #mastapple2c and should appear in all its glory in your #retrocomputing timelines!

Project of the day is adding image attachements to toots made from #MastApple2c. First steps:
✅ drawing image(s) with Mousepaint and saving it
✅ exporting it to my PC (done with STP, https://github.com/colinleroy/a2tools/tree/master/src/stp)

While I was at it, I've made a page for my #AppleII network tools. It ships with an FTP and a telnet client, and works with the same proxy as the one #MastApple2c uses. #retrocomputing
https://www.colino.net/wordpress/en/network-tools-for-the-apple-ii/

Release 1.2 of MastApple//c adds (some) emoji to smiley conversion 🙂
Hope you'll like it ❤️
You can get it there: https://www.colino.net/wordpress/binary-release-of-mastodon-for-the-apple-c/

#retrocomputing #mastapple2c