Over the past two days, I have released three key pieces of Cemetech software that have finally reached fruition this week after about two years of development. In order of release, the three programs are Doors CS 7.2 Beta 3, gCnClient 2.0, and Sandpaper 1.0. Doors CS 7.2 Beta 3 is final beta release of Doors CS 7.2, which brings new networking features to the popular calculator shell. gCnClient v2.0 is a stable, final version of the Windows/Linux/Mac OS software for connecting calculators to the internet. Sandpaper 1.0 is a completed FTP server/client for transferring files across a room or around the world.
globalCALCnet (gCn) Client v2.0: version 1.0. While
Doors CS 7.2 beta 3 contains everything you need to network calculators together locally, you can't easily connect your calculator to the internet or to other calculators dozens or thousands of miles away. That's where globalCALCnet comes in. First, gCn allows you to connect CALCnet networks together, making calculators that are far apart think they are locally networked. Secondly, gCn lets non-calculator services like HTTP, IRC, and FTP be easily connected to CALCnet networks. This means that you can browse the internet with
Gossamer, chat on IRC with
CALCnet Chat!, or browse the ticalc.org archives with
Sandpaper, all directly from your calculator.
To connect your calculator to gCn, you need a computer to mediate between gCn and CALCnet (although that
may soon change). On that computer, you run the gCnClient software, which you can download below. gCnClient 2.0 lets you use a mini-USB cable with a single TI-84+/SE, or an Arduino or AVR as a bridge to a large network of TI-83+/SE and TI-84+/SE calculators. This version adds the mini-USB ("direct USB") support, as well as greatly improving the stability of the entire client.
Doors CS 7.2 Beta 3: The last Doors CS beta, version 7.2 beta 2 was
released one day shy of two years, the same day that
Gossamer, the
widely-
publicized web browser for TI graphing calculators. The next version will (hopefully) be the full Doors CS 7.2, which will probably be the last release for the TI-83 Plus and TI-84 Plus line of non-color-screen graphing calculators. So what does Doors CS 7.2 Beta 3 bring? The three major changes:
- Across-the-board optimizations, bug fixes, and speed improvements
- Greatly-improved direct USB (miniUSB) globalCALCnet stability
- BASIC CALCnet, a set of libraries within the DCSB Libs to let TI-BASIC programmers use the CALCnet networking system in their own programs.
Special thanks go to Tim "Geekboy" Keller for his hard working writing the BASIC CALCnet libraries and helping to debug and repair other CALCnet/gCn features. If you want to try making multiplayer TI-BASIC games, if you want to use direct USB CALCnet, or if you simply want the latest and greatest in Doors CS versions, you should grab this update.
Sandpaper v1.0: I began Sandpaper as a bit of a toy project to challenge myself while riding a bus up to Massachusetts and Maine to visit fellow Cemetech administrators Merthsoft and elfprince13, but it blossomed into a much larger project than I first anticipated. I entered it into the TI Concours 2011 contest and won second place in the ASM category, and continued working on it only very occasionally in the intervening two years. I'm very happy to finally have it completed and off my to-do list.
What is Sandpaper? Sandpaper v1.0 is an FTP client and server for TI graphing calculators, with two major purposes. The first is to let you transfer files between two (or more!) calculators, even if you're not close enough for a link cable. You can connect over CALCnet or globalCALCnet, connect to a remote calculator, browse the programs, groups, pictures, appvars, matrices, lists, GDBs, and strings, and send files to and from the remote calculator.
Its second purpose is to let you download (or potentially back up) files directly from and to the internet. A bridge for ticalc.org is complete, meaning you can browse the ticalc.org file archives directly on your calculator, view the contents of zip files and readmes, and then download calculator files directly from those zips onto your calculator.
Sources:Part 1 (Doors CS 7.2 Beta 3):
http://www.cemetech.net/news.php?id=599Part 2 (gCnClient v2.0):
http://www.cemetech.net/news.php?id=600Part 3 (Sandpaper v1.0):
http://www.cemetech.net/news.php?id=601
