April 16, 2008

Readers will recall that one of my favorite projects of late was putting my beloved Apple //c to daily use as a text terminal to Mac OS X running an IRC client, by way of a null modem serial link. (In fact, you could say I became carried away with the notion.) A recent project I've stumbled upon makes my setup look rather dull by comparison.

Joshua Bell, who works for Linden Lab, creators of Second Life, has posted a video demonstrating an application he has written that streams live video from the Windows desktop to the Apple IIc via null modem serial link. It's full color video (well, all six colors of the Apple II high res screenmode) and it's surprisingly smooth.

Unexpectedly, no software need be loaded on the Apple //c to get the video up and running. It's simply a matter of telling the //c to accept input from the modem port ("IN#2"), keying a couple of modem port config commands, and kicking off the app on the Windows side. It dumps a small assembly language program to the //c which accepts the incoming video data through the modem port and starts it running. And that's it - voila!

Bell's demonstration features Second Life running full-screen streamed to the //c. It's an impressive effort. Where's the Mac OS X version of this clever application?!