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 wherever you go: the Net-@wherever wearable.
“In 2001 you would 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 would slurp down about 93k of valuable Net knowledge to scroll on the 59×16 display — 10 characters by 2 characters — to learn any time you wished!
“That’s, after all, if the distant host the watch’s Home windows 9x-based shopper accessed have been nonetheless up, on which it depended for nearly something to obtain and set up.”
A real product of the dot-com growth, the Net-@nywhere works once more — no less than 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 Extensive Net at a troublesome time: the dot-com bubble had already burst, although its full impact would not be felt till 2002. Regardless of this, web-hungry customers have been desirous 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 knowledge whilst 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 related telephones rose into ascendancy.
“Apart from time and date, it additionally included an handle e-book (cellphone and e-mail), scheduler, knowledge browser (that is the place downloaded content material would go), a world clock, a day by day alarm, a countdown timer, a ‘sport’ mode, a cease watch/primary chronograph with lap perform, knowledge hyperlink and ‘graphic animations,'” Kaiser writes. “The info browser ‘can entry necessary internet hyperlinks and knowledge.’ The guide divides the clock into residence 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 in a position to work out the system’s esoteric file format. (📷: Cameron Kaiser)
Really getting knowledge 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 knowledge to be entered manually and synchronized to the watch it relied on a long-since-shuttered distant server to drag down reside internet knowledge.
Sniffing the visitors each between the shopper software program and the web and between the shopper software program and the watch, Kaiser set about creating “pretend web pages” the watch might course of — determining the “extremely contrived” format required step-by-step.
“We now have sufficient data to assemble a primary 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 reside, freely obtainable textual climate knowledge from the U.S. Nationwide Climate Service as an information supply, format it for the display, translate that into encoded packets and ship these packets.”
A compact utility pulls down climate knowledge from the trendy internet and massages it right into a Net-@nywhere suitable format. (📷: Cameron Kaiser)
Chaining collectively a Perl script and a easy C program which may push knowledge to the watch, Kaiser was in a position to efficiently pull down reside internet knowledge and push it to the Net-@nywhere. “[The] Perl script […] takes ASCII textual content on normal enter and encodes and packetizes it on normal output, and [the] primary 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 challenge is on the market on the Outdated Classic Computing Analysis weblog; the WebAny software is revealed to GitHub beneath the permissive BSD license.