A new version of Marinetti, the implementation of TCP/IP for the Apple IIgs, is now publicly available.

The previous public announcement of a release of Marinetti was 3.0b3 in 2006. Since then there have been several bug fix versions that have not been made widely available. In 2014, the then-latest build, 3.0b8, was made available to Uthernet owners. That version included some debug code that was left in the build to assist with bug reporting. This latest release removes that debug code to improve performance. There are no other functional changes. While this software is still officially classed as ‘beta’ software, it has been extensively tested. It is highly recommended that existing users of 3.0b3 and 3.0b8 upgrade to this version.

Marinetti 3.0b9 can be downloaded from the Marinetti homepage, or the a2RetroSystems website where it is available as a disk image that can be mounted in an emulator or a disk emulation device like the CFFA. The disk image includes the original Marinetti 3.0b1 installer for new installations if necessary and a replacement Init which contains the latest changes. Ewen Wannop’s latest Uthernet link layers are also provided.

Marinetti was originally written by Richard Bennett in 1996 and was subsequently released as an open-source project. It is now maintained by members of the Marinetti Open Source Project, which is hosted on SourceForge.

TreeHugger is a GS/OS Printer Port driver which supports the AppSocket/JetDirect protocol. Essentially, this means you can print to any networked printer that supports the JetDirect (AppSocket) Protocol, that a native mode IIgs Printer Driver exists for. With Harmonie and Independence that means an awful lot of printers out there have the potential to work as PCL is the de-facto standard among the major printer manufactures. Like Postscript®, that was Apple’s choice for raster image printing starting with the Apple LaserWriter, and natively supported by the Apple IIgs, PCL was HP’s answer to PostScript®. With the introduction of the Harmonie and Independence printer support packages, PCL support and a lot more choices for printers were suddenly available to Apple IIgs users. But network printing was still mostly out of reach unless you used LocalTalk and an Apple LaserWriter or compatible printer. Until now, that is.

Announced with a surprise comment in A2Central’s IRC channel this evening, krüe says, “Please test. Remember that I have no idea what I’m doing…” and almost instantly met with enthusiasm and praise, this is the first release, and as such it is set with a version # of ‘0.0’. I can’t say I’ve seen that before. :)

TreeHugger requires Marinetti to work, and while the 2.0.1 features were used, testing was done with 3.0b3 and an Uthernet card, using the Harmonie LaserJet III 300×300 dpi driver with a LaserJet 6p connected via a software based print server, p910nd. Currently other aspect ratios do not work and there are various issues with the page setup dialog and crashes that are being worked out. as krüe says, “..it probably doesn’t work for anyone else but me..” he does expect to be working on it more, but for now input on what works and what does not would probably go a long way.

TreeHugger is available at http://krue.net/treehugger/.