Firmware version 1.2.1 is now available for the Flyer. It includes the following additions/fixes:

• Ability to listen for connections. Set your Commodore up as a server!
• TCP data source fix – no EOI was sent when reading from a channel that currently had zero bytes available.

Simply type the following command on your Commodore to instruct the Flyer to download and install the latest firmware:

Listening for Connections
To open a channel to listen for incoming connections, simply use the “listen:” channel protocol along with the port you want to listen on. A maximum of 2 channels can be listening for connections at any one time.

For example:

open2,7,2,"listen:5000"

The existing command “n-s:” (net stat) may be issued via the command channel to determine if a connection has been accepted, as it returns the connection status as part of its response.

Assuming the command channel has already been opened and bound to file id 7,

open7,7,15

the connection status may be checked as follows:

print#7,"n-s:2"
input#7,a,b$,c,d
print "connected: ";d

‘d’ will be either 1 or 0, indicating whether or not a connection has been established on channel 2.

Once a connection has been established, normal communication can proceed via print#, get# and input# commands.

New “Connection Info” Command

A new command has been added in firmware version 1.2.1, “c-i:” (connection info), which will return the remote host’s IP address and port, as well as current connection status for a particular channel. For example:

print#7,"c-i:2"
input#7,a,b$,c,d
print "error: ";a
print "remote ip: ";b$
print "remote port: ";c
print "connected: ";d

More examples will be posted shortly. Please watch this space! 🙂

Firmware version 1.2.0 is now available for the Flyer. Simply type the following command on your Commodore to instruct the Flyer to download and install the latest firmware:

It is now possible to stream disks over the network! This is accomplished by downloading a small disk shortcut to the Flyer instead of an entire image.

commodoreONLINE fully supports this exciting new feature. Updated versions of the cloud server are also available for immediate download.

To request a streaming disk shortcut, add an additional argument (“,r”) when loading a disk onto the Flyer:

load"disk:Blue Max,r",7

This indicates the disk should be remotely mounted. A very small shortcut file will be downloaded and stored on the Flyer instead of the entire disk image. Otherwise, it will appear and function just as any other disk managed by the Flyer (you can switch between both local and remote mounted disks with the button as usual).

Note there is a limit of 32 disks that can be managed by the Flyer at any one time, even though the Flyer is capable of storing many more shortcuts as they are only 4K each. This limit may be lifted in the future.

When modifying a streamed disk, the changes are not automatically copied to the original disk – the disk must be saved first. This mirrors the usage pattern of standard downloaded disks. The “,r” does not need to be specified when saving a streaming disk back to a cloud account:

save"disk:Blue Max",7

It is also possible to perform a temporary remote mount as follows:

open7,7,15,"r-m:Blue Max":close7

At this point (assuming the disk was found), the disk will be mounted for read-only access (“REMOTE MOUNT” will be displayed on the LCD). Pressing the button on the Flyer will unmount the disk automatically and return the Flyer to normal operation.

You can also unmount a temporarily mounted disk with the following command:

open7,7,15,"r-u:":close7

Firmware version 1.1.9 is now available for the Flyer.

1.1.9 is an interim release containing some soon-to-be-announced features which are still in development. It does, however, contain a few IEEE-488 protocol fixes (including full support for CATALOG) that I wanted to make available ASAP for the growing number of PET/Flyer users.

Cloud Server 1.0.3 is now available on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X platforms!
The latest release of the cloud server includes the following changes and new features:

• Added ability to chose ethernet interface if multiple are available.
• Added optional access restrictions to allow multi-user configuration (including login credentials & per user directories).
• Disk types (d64, d71, ..) now displayed in search listings returned from the server.
• Fixed bug causing wrong disk type ID to be sent back to the Flyer. This would cause incorrect disk types to be displayed when listing disks on the Flyer (load”$$”,7) even though the disks would otherwise work fine.
• Media is no longer pre-scanned. Any file system changes are seen immediately.
• Cloud Server now available for Windows, Linux (Ubuntu tested) and Mac OS X.

As always, please let me know if you have any questions or feedback, especially regarding the new platforms!

Firmware version 1.1.8 is now available for the Flyer. It includes the following additions/fixes:

• REL file support.
• Support for D64 error blocks. The error blocks (if present) were previously ignored by the Flyer’s drive emulation.
• IEEE-488 protocol timing fix.
• Miscellaneous minor fixes and code cleanup (leading spaces in filenames now handled correctly, red LED error flash rate now matches 1541, …).