The Apple IIgs gets a new Gopher client. Seriously.
The Apple IIgs gets a new Gopher client. Seriously.
A computer discontinued 30 years ago & a TCP protocol left for dead. Awesome.
The Apple IIgs was released in 1986. The Gopher protocol was created in 1991… and hit a brick wall in 1993.
For those unfamiliar with Gopher… think of it like the World Wide Web. Only menu-driven. And text. It’s… kinda wonderful.
Yet here we are. Three decades after both the IIgs and Gopher were all but discarded into the dumpster of computer history… and we have a brand new, open source Gopher client being developed and released for the IIgs.
Seriously. Behold, the aptly named “gs-gopher”:
The System Requirements as per the developer:
Apple IIgs
Marinetti 3.0b11 or newer
System 6.0.1 or newer
Marinetti provides a TCP/IP driver and stack for the IIgs OS. There are a number of other TCP application available which use Marinetti, including a Telnet application, a web browser and — not joking — even a web server.
Gs-gopher is surprisingly full-featured with more than a couple nice touches — including the ability to hit a hot-key to bring up a Veronica Search (a search engine for Gopher).
It is truly wonderful to see Gopher continue to be used and developed in 2023… and equally delightful to see new software built for the amazing Apple IIgs. A machine that was truly ahead of its time… and truly unique.
You can grab the full source code (in C) and the IIgs binary over on the GitHub page.
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Gopher really should have won against WWW, but some things just work out the wrong way.