Date   : Tue, 17 Sep 2002 01:41:33 +0100
From   : "Richard Gellman" <r.gellman@...>
Subject: Re: web fetching from BBC emulators

>It's an attractive concept. I'd really like to be able to do:
>CHAIN "www/mdfsnet/f9/co/uk.Software.Music.JGH1.ColdTea" on an emulated
>Beeb!

One part of that is really simple, the other is really hard :)

The simple part is the interface between the emulation and the internet,
thats a simple memory mapped I/O or instruction trap.

The hard part is getting the emulated BBC to accept that such a name is
valid. No OS provided as standard with even the BBC Master 128 will concur
that such a name is valid. To get around that you have the following
options:

1. Trap OS Calls (OSFILE, OSCLI, OSBGET, OSBPUT, OSBPGB, etc) to deal with
the names and perform the appropriate action
or if your willing to do all that then:
2. Write a proper BBC Filing System ROM to do the same (not as hard as it
seems in fact).

Then you could do something like the following:

*WEBFS
*SMOUNT www.somesite.org
*DIR PROGRAMS.MINE
CHAIN "SOMETHING"

For proper compatibility of course, such sites would ideally need something
to provide certain FS services, such as file catalogue. This would simply be
a CGI script taking in parameters and responding appropriatley. Such a thing
would be for convenience only, as the simple part of running a program off
the web wouldn't require any specific interfaces to be built on the
webserver.

-- Richard Gellman