The A2osX project has a new home on github. The A2osX team has created a new GitHub Team for Open Source organization and moved the A2osX repository to this new organization. This allows us to expand the number of contributors to the project. Developers with Apple II Assembly experience are welcome to join!
In addition, the A2osX team is proud to announce the availability of two new versions of ProDOS, one with a very minor tweak and the other a major update/overhaul. There is ProDOS 2.03tc: an 8 byte patch to ProDOS 2.03 which updates the year table to support years through 2023, and ProDOS FX: a Faster and eXtended version, that adds many new features including lower case file, directory and volume name support. These new versions are already being included in the latest Stable media and will become the versions of ProDOS supplied on all future media. The team added a new Document to our repository that covers these and other publicly available versions of ProDOS and their use with A2osX.
A2osX now (it actually has for some time) supports lower case in file, directory and volume names as long as this capability is available in the version of ProDOS you are running. Consult the new A2osX and ProDOS document for more information and a table on which versions of ProDOS provide this capability to A2osX.
The EDIT utility has undergone a major update with new dialog boxes, an enhanced status bar and many speed and stability improvements.. A2osX invites your testing and feedback.
The A2osX Kernel (the core process and API) and the interactive Shell have undergone major revision to move some code and date to AUX memopry (the 2nd 64K block, one of the reasons A2osX requires 128K) thus freeing additional main memory. Main memory is where most user applications such as LS, CAT, TELNET, etc. run. With 2 virtual terminals enabled, free main memory has increased from 22K to 26.5.
Speaking virtual TTYs, A2osX has been enhanced to now support up to 8 virtual terminals on the console, configurable with the KCONFIG utility. Consult the User Guide for more information. Note that with 8 virtual TTYs defined, available main memory drops to 17.5K. Open Apple 1 through 8 is used to be switched between the virtual terminals, Open Apple-0 is still used to access the A2osX Console (displays system errors and information) and Open Apple-9 is reserved for future use of DHGR (Double High-res Graphics).
A new bell option (Echo \a) has been added to the echo command in the shell (/bin/sh) to ring a bell on VT-100 connected terminals (via the SSC driver or the TELNETD deamon). The bell has no affect on the console.
Multiple bugs have been address from issues posted on GitHub including updates to cut, format, sh (for internal command), nscutil, ping, wc, and many more. Users can check the status of issues or create new ones for A2osX on Github.
A great new networking utility, wget is now available which can be used to access/post to web servers. This utility can be used in combination with services like IFTTT to send tweets from A2osX, or send message to apps like Slack.
If you would like to read all the past news articles for A2osX, you can read the news article found here.
