popular ones that are compatible with GNO. If you are programming in C, it is highly recommended that you purchase "Splat!", written by Michael Hackett of Some Assembly Required. This is also available from Procyon. See also Q#13.2. If you are programming in assembly, it is recommended that you install GSBug. This comes bundled with ORCA/M and is also available for download from the Apple Inc dts ftp site. GSBug has many add-on packages used to increase its functionality.

A#1.6: For the most part, the only support available is that given by GNO developers in the Apple II community. In other words, what you get is what you get. Often a polite question posted to comp.sys.apple2.gno will result in a helpful response. Procyon still offers limited support for people who purchased GNO prior to August 1997. No support is available from Procyon for those who obtained GNO after it changed to freeware status.

A#8.12: There is a rudimentary one called MuGS by Brian Tao. It requires a shell account (presumably on a UNIX box) for part of the software. The base MuGS package handles news articles that are spooled on the UNIX machine's local disk. There is an NNTP (Net News Transfer Protocol) patch by Devin Reade that allows MuGS to work with an NNTP server. MuGS is available as described in its describe(1) entry (see Q#4.4). Because of a lack of TCP/IP there is no software for GNO v2.0.

A shell that takes full advantage of the multitasking provided (i.e., job control), and 'regular expressions', and a simple programming language. A powerful programming environment. All the calls needed to control processes, support Inter-Process Communication (IPC), and other tools necessary to support multitasking are available to the programmer. The first completely consistent method for accessing serial and console I/O on the Apple II.

A#1.2: GNO was developed by Procyon Enterprises (Jawaid Bazyar, prop.). Until August 1997, GNO was a commercial product. In August 1997, Jawaid changed GNO's status to that of freeware. Procyon still retains the copyright on the kernel, gsh, and other components which were written by or for Procyon. GNO IS NOT PUBLIC DOMAIN.

GNU/Linux AMD64, IA-32, and PowerPC systems also have valgrind, a tool suite for debugging and profiling. Sun Solaris SPARC systems also have adb, dbx, xgdb, and xxdbx. The dbx debugger has a very useful feature in the check command, which has options for checking memory access, memory leaks, and heap memory use; they can be helpful in catching use of uninitialized variables, and out-of-bounds array and pointer references. Sun Solaris systems have the ctrace C program debugger.

A#1.3: The currently released version is v2.0.4. The version currently under development is v2.0.6. v2.0.5 never had a general release, and is not available. For those programmers using ORCA/C v2.1.x, there was a update made available (for both GNO v2.0.4 and GNO v2.0.6 users) on 22 Dec 97. It consists of updated headers, libraries, and manual pages. It is available at the following site: ftp://ftp.gno.org/pub/apple2/gs.specific/gno/base206

A#1.4: The GNO documentation specifies that the minimum requirement is an Apple IIGS with 1.25 MB of memory and a 3.5" disk drive. Realistically (especially with all the third-party add-ons), a hard drive (or other large mass storage device) should be considered a necessity. An accelerator and additional memory is recommended. There is not an official "minimum disk space" requirement as yet. When this information becomes available, it will be added to this FAQ.

A#2.4: In most cases, yes. However, GNO doesn't currently allow more than one desktop program to run concurrently. It does allow you to run multiple text applications with or without a desktop application, to the limits of your available memory. There is a program (also available from Procyon), called Switch-It!, that allows one two switch between running desktop programs. It is not multitasking (in that only the currently displayed desktop program is actually running), nor does it require GNO.

A#3.1: GNO/ME Overview Kernel Reference Manual Shell (gsh) User's Manual Manual Pages (some printed, all online) Online versions of these documents are also available. See Q#1.5.

A#3.2: The GNO Overview has quite a complete reading list for users and programmers, and it is too long to go into detail here. However, in general, the references are broken down into the following categories: - UNIX reference books. - C reference books. - Editor reference books. - Apple IIgs Programming References The following list, should also be considered "must have" for any serious programming: - The ORCA/C and/or ORCA/M manuals, as appropriate.

A#4.1: Lots of free utilities that bring some of the power of UNIX systems to the IIGS. In addition to getting the utility executable files, you get the source for many of these. These programs have been provided by various authors.

GNO stuff can also be found in other directories on these sites. The three primary general-purpose sites are: ftp://apple2.caltech.edu/Zocalo/pub/apple2/shellprogs ftp://ground.isca.uiowa.edu/apple2/apple16/gno ftp://ftp.gno.org/pub/apple2 Trenco (trenco.gno.org or ftp ftp.gno.org) is the master site for GNO development as of August 1997. See Q#1.7. See the comp.sys.apple2 FAQ for other Apple II ftp sites.

A#5.3: Anything you add to your GNO installation beyond what is in the base installation should go into the /usr/local hierarchy. This will facilitate future updates, in that you will only have to replace those directories used by the GNO base distribution, and your customized files will not be overwritten. There are some exceptions to this. For example, /etc/passwd, /etc/namespace, and a few other files that have to be customized do not and will not reside in the /usr/local hierarchy.

A#7.1: GUPP (Grand Unified Patch Program by Nathan Mates) is recommended for fixing memory-trashing bugs present in GNO kernel versions v2.0.4 and v2.0.6-beta. GUPP also does other patches that may be applicable to programs running under GNO. GUPP will not touch kernels earlier than v2.0.4 even though those bugs probably exist in earlier versions of the kernel. GUPP is available from the ground and caltech sites, and also at ftp://ftp.visi.com/users/nathan/a2software/gupp.shk. See also Q#14.4.

A#2.1: GNO contains components that originate with a variety of flavors of UNIX. These include 4.3BSD, XINU, and SYSV. It is mostly BSD. As of GNO v2.0.6, GNO has become closer to 4.4BSD. Work is in progress to make it as compliant as possible to POSIX 1003.1 and POSIX 1003.2.

A#2.2: No. GNO with a shell (such as gsh) is intended to be a replacement for ORCA/Shell. Similarly, one cannot run GNO from ORCA/Shell. However, you can still use the various ORCA languages and (the majority of) utilities from GNO. See the sections on "Programs" and "Compiling", below.

A#2.3: Yes. GNO is completely compatible with the SecondSight card. However, GNO's console driver currently does not support the SecondSight card's VGA specific text modes. A SecondSight aware console driver is planned as a future enhancement.

A#2.5: In a nutshell, no. The exact reasons are not generally known, but the author (Mike Westerfield) does not ever expect to have a compatible version available.

A#4.3: Perhaps you could use the FTP-by-mail service. Send mail to ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com with the subject line of "help" and no body for information. Another alternative is to use the WWW to access those sites. WWW access information is available in the comp.sys.apple2 FAQ (see Q#1.7).

A#6.2: === See the CAVEAT in Q#6.1 === There are a few aspects to this, so it has been split into various questions in this section of the FAQ. You should read each of those questions when so directed, below. The following instructions assume that you have already installed your ORCA languages; various files and directories will be moved from their original locations. If you haven't already done so, change the auxtype of (original_orca_directory)/shell/Editor to hex DC00 (see Q#14.1).

A#6.4: === See the CAVEAT in Q#6.1 === While it is possible to have all of your header files in one directory hierarchy (this is how it was done in the stock v2.0.4 distribution), it is STRONGLY advised that you keep separate directory hierarchies. They are: /usr/include /HFSinclude /lang/orca/libraries/orcacdefs /lib/orcacdefs /usr/local/include The /usr/include directory should contain all the header files that ship with GNO. This will include some subdirectories like sys, machine, and net.

A#6.5: === See the CAVEAT in Q#6.1 === There are two versions of this file, one for GNO and one for ORCA/Shell. For GNO, the /lib/orcacdefs/defaults.h file should contain: #define __appleiigs__ #define __GNO__ #pragma path "/usr/include" #pragma path "/HFSinclude" /* needed for GNO v2.0.6 */ #pragma path "/lang/orca/libraries/orcacdefs" (See Q#11.11 regarding a problem with using the "path" pragma.) For ORCA/Shell, the /lang/orca/libraries/orcacdefs/defaults.

A#6.6: === See the CAVEAT in Q#6.1 === If you're using GNO v2.0.6, no modifications should be necessary provided you've placed all the GNO header files into /usr/include and /HFSinclude as appropriate. This applies to both ORCA/C v2.0.3 and ORCA/C v2.1.x. There are various header files included with the GNO v2.0.1 distribution. These should all be copied into the /usr/include directory hierarchy as discussed in Q#6.4. (Versions 2.0.2, 2.0.3, and 2.0.

A#8.5: A text oriented browser has been ported by Derek Taubert and requires the GS/TCP package. Derek has also done some work on a Graphics based WWW browser. Neither package has as yet been released. There are no known WWW browsers available yet that are based on Marinetti. This is subject to change, and you should see the Marinetti web page for the latest details. See Q#8.3.

A#8.6: Currently the GNO serial drivers only support the two built-in serial ports. This does not imply that you cannot use a serial card in a remote machine (such as a IIe) that is connecting to your IIgs running GNO. A#8.7: These settings will usually work. See the Notes, below.

lines to your /etc/initab file: # this will initialize the modem port on startup md:b:once:i:/usr/sbin/runover .ttya /bin/stty 38400 You should of course change "38400" to whatever speed is appropriate for your site.