Classic computing fanatic Cameron Kaiser has introduced again a tool from the times earlier than pocket-friendly always-connected moveable supercomputers, designed to allow you to take snippets of the World Net Net with you anyplace you go: the Net-@anyplace wearable.
“In 2001 you may get the Net-@nywhere (the ‘Worldwide Net Watch’),” Kaiser explains. “Load up the software program in your PC and slap it in its little docking station, and you may slurp down about 93k of treasured Net information to scroll on the 59×16 display screen — 10 characters by 2 characters — to learn any time you needed!
“That’s, in fact, if the distant host the watch’s Home windows 9x-based consumer accessed have been nonetheless up, on which it depended for just about something to obtain and set up.”
A real product of the dot-com increase, the Net-@nywhere works once more — a minimum of in addition to it ever did. (📷: Cameron Kaiser)
Launched in 2001, the Kinger Net-@nywhere tried to capitalize on the rising love of the World Huge Net at a tough time: the dot-com bubble had already burst, although its full impact would not be felt till 2002. Regardless of this, web-hungry shoppers have been desperate to get their repair of the ‘internet on-the-go — with out having to hook costly laptops as much as payphones by way of acoustic couplers.
The Net-@nywhere promised an answer, downloading information when you’re at your PC for later consumption — although being restricted to textual content proved a problem, and the gadget was laid to relaxation simply two years later because the BlackBerry household of keyboard-equipped ‘internet linked telephones rose into ascendancy.
“In addition to time and date, it additionally included an deal with e book (telephone and e-mail), scheduler, information browser (that is the place downloaded content material would go), a world clock, a day by day alarm, a countdown timer, a ‘recreation’ mode, a cease watch/fundamental chronograph with lap perform, information hyperlink and ‘graphic animations,'” Kaiser writes. “The information browser ‘can entry necessary internet hyperlinks and data.’ The handbook divides the clock into dwelling time and world time modes and mentions reminder options for the scheduler (‘planner remind’) and as much as three ‘particular days’ you possibly can rely right down to.”
The unique software program relied on a long-shuttered FTP website, however Kaiser was capable of work out the machine’s esoteric file format. (📷: Cameron Kaiser)
Truly getting information on there, although, must occur with out the unique server software program. Kaiser began by changing the long-defunct battery within the watch to show it nonetheless labored, then investigated the RS232 serial dock bundled with the watch. The bundled software program CD loaded high quality in a Home windows 98 digital machine, Kaiser discovered, however whereas it could enable information to be entered manually and synchronized to the watch it relied on a long-since-shuttered distant server to tug down dwell internet information.
Sniffing the visitors each between the consumer software program and the web and between the consumer software program and the watch, Kaiser set about creating “pretend websites” the watch might course of — determining the “extremely contrived” format required step-by-step.
“We now have sufficient info to assemble a fundamental translation utility to show ASCII into watch encoding, after which to push the outcomes to the watch over the serial port,” Kaiser says. “To make this sensible, we’ll use dwell, freely obtainable textual climate information from the U.S. Nationwide Climate Service as a knowledge supply, format it for the display screen, translate that into encoded packets and ship these packets.”
A compact utility pulls down climate information from the trendy internet and massages it right into a Net-@nywhere appropriate format. (📷: Cameron Kaiser)
Chaining collectively a Perl script and a easy C program which might push information to the watch, Kaiser was capable of efficiently pull down dwell internet information and push it to the Net-@nywhere. “[The] Perl script […] takes ASCII textual content on customary enter and encodes and packetizes it on customary output, and [the] fundamental C program […] takes a pre-packetized file and pushes it to the watch. For the demonstration I added two little formatter Perl scripts and a Makefile.”
Kaiser’s full, detailed write-up on the venture is accessible on the Outdated Classic Computing Analysis weblog; the WebAny device is revealed to GitHub underneath the permissive BSD license.