NEWS: GNO/ME Now 'FREEWARE'

GNO/ME 2.0. Information

Procyon Enterprises announced today that they are now accepting orders for the new version of their GNO/ME UNIX system for the Apple IIGS.

James Brookes, Vice President of Procyon and head engineer of the GNO project, said "GNO/ME 2.0 represents a substantial improvement over the original, which was in its own right a ground-breaking work. In the past year since the original release, we've listened to customer's concerns and addressed most of them. We brought even more UNIX power to the IIGS by implementing the most powerful inter-process communication system available for the IIGS".

UNIX is quickly becoming the de-facto standard among operating systems. Even operating systems which never claimed to be UNIX compatible are rushing to provide POSIX compliance interfaces for their systems. (POSIX is the International Standards Organization's UNIX standard).

"This release reaffirms our committment to the Apple IIGS, a very capable computer that many developers abandoned", said Matt Gudermuth, President of Procyon. "Some people ask if the IIGS is powerful enough to run UNIX, and many used to answer with a resounding NO!. We answer these people by pointing out that the first mainframe computers that ran UNIX were far less powerful than the Apple IIGS. The IIGS is here to stay, and we're going to keep supporting it with our powerful system software."

GNO provides UNIX features in an application environment that runs "on top of" GS/OS, so that the IIGS software everyone enjoys is actually enhanced by using GNO. Included as standard with the GNO system are almost one hundred standard UNIX utilites and some IIGS-specific ones such as print spooling from text or desktop applications and a "shell-in-a-window" New Desk Accessory. Full support for remote access to a IIGS via a modem, and built-in ultra high speed serial communications means that GNO is the perfect system for writing communications programs.

"Communications is one of GNO's strong points," remarks Derek Taubert, the individual responsible for the upcoming Internet access software for GNO. "Because GNO does all the low-level work for me, and gives me a simple interface to access it, I can concentrate on the task at hand instead of worrying about writing things like interrupt handlers".

GNO comes with comprehensive documentation covering all aspects of the system, including programming the kernel, the shell, the C and assembly libraries, and utilities.

For more information, including information on upgrade pricing, contact Procyon at:

Procyon Enterprises Incorporated
Apple IIGS Software Publishing and Development
P.O. Box 641
Englewood, CO 80151-0641 USA
(303) 781-3273

New GNO/ME Purchases

If you don't currently own GNO, you can purchase it from GS+/EGO Systems for $89. GS+'s phone number is 423-843-1775 (Tuesday & Thursday only)

GNO/ME 2.0 Upgrade Plan

To upgrade your copy of GNO/ME to 2.0, send a check or money order, along with your GNO serial number, to the address at the end of this note. At this time we cannot accept credit card payments; we apologize for any inconvenience.

It is very important that you include your serial number. If you have lost your original disks or manual, and don't know your serial number, we have records for almost everyone (the database we were using destroyed some records. Hopefully we can fully restore the database during the update process).

If you purchased GNO before the final 1.0 release, but didn't receive a real copy of GNO 1.0, subtract $10 from the upgrade price. No fibbing! We know who got 1.0 and who didn't :-)

A $3 shipping fee applies to all domestic orders (including Canada), $8 for overseas shipping.

Full GNO 2.0 system, including all printed documentation: $30 GNO 2.0 system with only user references (kernel overview and shell manual): $20.

Do not forget to add in the shipping fee - we cannot ship orders that do not include shipping charges.

Send orders to:
Procyon Enterprises Incorporated
GNO/ME Upgrade
P.O. Box 641
Englewood, CO 80151-0641

GNO 2.0 New Feature List

Kernel

• Now provides six Inter-Process Communication methods for unprecedented power (signals, semaphores, pipes, pseudo-terminals, messages, and ports).

• Named Prefix support. No matter what your hard drive partitions are named, every GNO system has a /bin, /usr, /dev, /etc, and other standard UNIX partition names.

• The serial drivers were completely rewritten to allow high-speed throughput, up to 38400 baud, and hardware and software (XON/XOFF) flowcontrol. They also implement the complete set of BSD control functions that are applicable on a IIGS.

• Pipes are up to 30 times faster than in 1.0!

• Compatible with System 6.0.1 features and applications - all standard System Software utilities (such as Finder) now run in GNO.

• Compatible with all of the ORCA 2.0 version languages, including ORCA/C and ORCA/Pascal.

• New fork2() call makes it easy to fine-tune parameters of a new process.

• Console driver now maps arrows and OA-sequences to ESC codes that can be read through the GS/OS read call.

• GNO now sends SendRequest codes to indicate GNO start up and shut down.

• Removed limit on number of user semaphores (screate)

• Code optimization means all these new features only take up 20K more of memory!

• Support for TCP/IP and sockets is implemented internal to the kernel

Shell

• Directory stacks save typing when moving among many directories.

• Complete command, filename, and variable-name expansion - just hit TAB to have the shell finish typing for you.

• Better support for running scripts in the background

• Command-line editor is now completely user-configurable. Don't like the standard editing keys? Change them!

• More environment variables for customizing the operation of the shell. More options in the PROMPT variable.

• New built-ins show all accessible commands.

• Can now invoke gsh with arguments to execute scripts and commands (for use inside other programs).

• More built-ins can have output redirected or piped.

Environment

• New installer automatically sets up a GNO system on any computer, and creates default configuration files. No more fussing with "rc" files to get GNO up and running.

• Complete docs for programming the kernel, shell and programmer's libraries; and documentation for the standard UNIX utilities. The documentation is now indexed.

• All applicable utilities now use the termcap library for flawless remote-access support. gsh, vi, less, more, etc. all use termcap.

• Print spooling utilities for both text files and GUI programs (like AppleWorks GS).

• gsi - Graphical Shell Interface NDA allows you to run a shell in a window while in a desktop program

• Suspend NDA allows the user to suspend a desktop application and return to the shell. 'fg' resumes the desktop program.

• rz/sz - Utilities for sending and receiving files via X,Y, and ZModem protocols; these all work in the background!

• copycat - a dumb terminal with some not-so-dumb features for quick modem use.

• Password-protected logins with multiple user accounts, and library routines to help programmers access user information.

• 'ls' utility is restartable and much faster.

• 'launch' command allows you to run a ProDOS 8 (or other incompatible) program and return directly to GNO without going through another program launcher.

• GNO Snooper CDA can now kill processes.

• Replacement ORCALIB C library that better works with GNO.

• Even better HFS and AppleShare support.

• More than twice as many standard utilities as version 1.0.

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