Stop the Presses! Interview with Bob Luneski
I called Bob Luneski at Oregon Research today (Thursday, 6 February 1997). We talked about the Termite PPP stack that has been running on he Amiga for over a year, and is now under development for the Atari ST series.
You've probably seen the rumours on Usenet. Let me say that most of them are true - this product is real, it's running right now under MagiC, and it's a serious contender for the 'best TCP stack on a personal computer' at the 1997 Academy Awards. Termite is written in hand-optimized assembly code (about 80 percent of it), which means it's fast and it's small - only about 200k total. It's also designed to be nearly idiot-proof; if you know the telephone number for your ISP, their domain name, and your login name and password, you should be able to fill in just those blanks and get connected immediately. For the power users (and incorrigible tweakers), there are 'hidden' configuration screens to set all sorts of variables, but since Termite complies with all of the latest RFCs (and is based on the NetBSD stack design), most users will not only never see the extra screesn, they'll never need them.
That's the good news. The bad news (if there is any bad news) is that it's about 2 months away from release as of today. Bob said he's not sure yet if it will possible to get it working right under single TOS - it may require MiNT (ack!) or MagiC, but they're 'still trying'. Given Oregon Research's track record (and Bob's stubborn resistance to people who say 'that's impossible!'), I would say there's a good chance of getting Termite running on every ST before Summer 1997.
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