Today I am releasing the third of three key pieces of Cemetech software that have finally reached fruition this week after about two years of development. In order of release, the three programs are Doors CS 7.2 Beta 3, gCnClient 2.0, and Sandpaper 1.0. Doors CS 7.2 Beta 3 is final beta release of Doors CS 7.2, which brings new networking features to the popular calculator shell. gCnClient v2.0 is a stable, final version of the Windows/Linux/Mac OS software for connecting calculators to the internet. Sandpaper 1.0 is a completed FTP server/client for transferring files across a room or around the world.

June Software Trifecta:
Part 1: Doors CS 7.2 Beta 3
Part 2: gCnClient v2.0
Part 3: Sandpaper v1.0

This final article in the trifecta presents Sandpaper v1.0. Although I released Sandpaper v0.95 earlier this week, the previous version came out in November 2011. I began Sandpaper as a bit of a toy project to challenge myself while riding a bus up to Massachusetts and Maine to visit fellow Cemetech administrators Merthsoft and elfprince13, but it blossomed into a much larger project than I first anticipated. I entered it into the TI Concours 2011 contest and won second place in the ASM category, and continued working on it only very occasionally in the intervening two years. I'm very happy to finally have it completed and off my to-do list.

What is Sandpaper? Sandpaper v1.0 is an FTP client and server for TI graphing calculators, with two major purposes. The first is to let you transfer files between two (or more!) calculators, even if you're not close enough for a link cable. You can connect over CALCnet or globalCALCnet, connect to a remote calculator, browse the programs, groups, pictures, appvars, matrices, lists, GDBs, and strings, and send files to and from the remote calculator.
Its second purpose is to let you download (or potentially back up) files directly from and to the internet. A bridge for ticalc.org is complete, meaning you can browse the ticalc.org file archives directly on your calculator, view the contents of zip files and readmes, and then download calculator files directly from those zips onto your calculator.

Check out the video below for a demonstration of downloading files from ticalc.org using Sandpaper v1.0, and of course download the final version and give it a try. You'll need Doors CS 7.2 beta 3 to run it, and if you want to use Sandpaper with gCn, you'll also need gCnClient v2.0. Please let me know if you encounter any bugs, or if you have feedback or comments about Sandpaper.

Download:
Sandpaper v1.0

KermMartian wrote:


I am a slave to Kerm. f(C_C)f

(sorry, not sorry)
Is the music from MobileTunes?
ordelore wrote:
Is the music from MobileTunes?
Assuming you mean the music in the video, nope, although it sounds like something that mobileTunes could manage. It's a song I found on a royalty-free music site.
Also, are you looking at communicating with someone DIRECTLY using gCn? eg: I could see what is on your calc.
ordelore wrote:
Also, are you looking at communicating with someone DIRECTLY using gCn? eg: I could see what is on your calc.
That's one of the things Sandpaper is for.
CalebHansberry wrote:
Sandpaper++


To be honest, I am skeptical, though. I love the idea, but the program itself has never worked for me - to be quite frank. In case you, Kerm, were wondering how it didn't work for me: It just showed lines of garbledness insted of my local files. (that was 0.95)
CalebHansberry wrote:
CalebHansberry wrote:
Sandpaper++


To be honest, I am skeptical, though. I love the idea, but the program itself has never worked for me - to be quite frank. In case you, Kerm, were wondering how it didn't work for me: It just showed lines of garbledness insted of my local files. (that was 0.95)
If you could provide a more detailed bug report (and if you could have told me back when you tried 0.95), that would be great. Razz
Just tried the ticalc.org browsing feature a few days ago (didn't realize I had to connect to FTPHub for that when I first tried Sandpaper), and it worked like a charm. Browsed the archives, found Centipede, read the description, downloaded and read the readme, then downloaded the game and started playing without ever opening a computer browser window Very Happy

I have to admit this is probably the awesomest calculator utility I've seen that still manages to be useful. It almost feels like a sort of app store/package manager.

The only thing I didn't particularly like was when I ran out of memory the first time I ran it. Sandpaper was fine browsing the root, /83plus, and /83plus/asm folders, but when I clicked on /83plus/asm/games it showed an error message and quit. I guess it makes sense to quit to let me clear out my RAM (which I did), but it just seemed a bit abrupt and personally I would have preferred it to have just remained at the current folder.

And maybe the gCn activity indicator stuff could be removed in a public release? It doesn't make too much sense to someone who doesn't know what's going on in the back end and it breaks the otherwise solid border around the screen.
It seems to be working fairly well. So far I have two bugs, three suggestions, and a possible issue.
  • The first bug (perhaps more a missing feature) is that the FTPHub doesn't have support for directories inside the .zip files. Thus, I cannot download, say, ANISPRITE from http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/446/44640.html.
  • The first suggestion is that text files optionally be downloadable as the equivalent DocDE files. They could be listed twice, once for the current pop-up functionality and the second time as a DocDE program.
  • The second suggestion is that, when navigating up, the pane should return to its previous scroll position, which would make it easier to look at several programs in a row.
  • The possible issue is that, since programs are shown by their actual on-calculator name and not their filename, there might be cases of two programs with the same name. Edit: Like this file, with both a .83p and .8xp: http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/366/36607.html Probably a good suggestion in this case is to ignore a .83p file if there's a .8xp one with the same name. Edit2: This is also a bug, since you are unable to choose between two programs with the same name because you always get the same one (probably the first).
  • The third suggestion is that there be some way to access 82 and 83 BASIC programs, because they should still run on the 83+ series.
  • Edit: Bug: failure to recover from "Error: Dupe" message. Steps to reproduce: (note: This is one specific way and it likely applies more generally. I'm not sure about other types of errors that pop up the same error message)
    1. Connect to ticalc on FTPHub, navigate to asm/games/ion/puzzle
    2. Scroll down to and select "Bot Atta".
    3. Press [CLEAR] to get rid of the description when it comes up.
    4. Click on one of the BOTATTCKs, and then click Get>Ram
    5. Once it downloads, repeat with the other one.
    6. Hit [CLEAR] on the error message popup
    7. Popup goes away and calculator freezes
I just tried this out and it is working perfectly, awesome work! Very Happy
Sorunome wrote:
I just tried this out and it is working perfectly, awesome work! Very Happy
Thanks! I'm glad to hear you tried it out and found it fully functional, and I'm also happy to finally have all three of these projects squared away for good.
  
Register to Join the Conversation
Have your own thoughts to add to this or any other topic? Want to ask a question, offer a suggestion, share your own programs and projects, upload a file to the file archives, get help with calculator and computer programming, or simply chat with like-minded coders and tech and calculator enthusiasts via the site-wide AJAX SAX widget? Registration for a free Cemetech account only takes a minute.

» Go to Registration page
Page 1 of 1
» All times are UTC - 5 Hours
 
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum

 

Advertisement