TUNES FTP = gone? // Ambitious Chris

[Chris Harris]

Hello There Fare --

	Chris Harris, Interface Project Bum, here, about to start a two 
week xmas vacation and feelin' dandy.  Was trying to get caught up 
on TUNES here, and, more specifically, trying to get to the ftp site, so 
I could try downloading your boot code and see how it works on my machine 
here.  Unfortunately, something seems to be up with your ftp server, 
disallowing anonymous access.  Is this a temporary problem, or have you 
folks been going through some obnoixious policy changes recently?  I 
would like to see what's been going on....

	As far as TUNES development, I've been thinking about maybe 
trying, during this break, to learn a thing or two about PC video 
systems...so I could maybe help write a driver or two for that.  (Other 
drivers might be doable by me too sometime, though I'd say the books 
availible on video are much more descriptive than those about much 
anything else -- or at least I have a video book here, in my house, while 
the others are at nice, expensive bookstores.)  One Q: were you planning 
to use BIOS things for the preliminary versions, or go straight for 
direct hardware IO?
	If you have any good ideas about how I could play around with
direct-to-hardware interaction, I'd be greatful for them.  I'm running 
solely Linux at the moment, and that seems a bit of an obnoxious platform 
to develop protected mode stuff for.  (Does running something as root 
give you access to everything, or is it much crazier than that?)  I 
suppose I could install DOS, but then I'd have to find some icky DOS 
compiler, and everything would be most wonderfully disgusting.  Are there 
any possibile alternatives?
	Was also thinking that maybe I should develop some word-processor 
sort of idea for Tunes, as I'm quite annoyed at the crappiness of MS Word 
these days.  (I still use it, down on my anscient mac, for compatibility 
with school...but it bugs the heck out of me.)  Of course, under tunes, 
it would look radically different from MS's 30meg approach to things.  
Instead, it'd be split into much smaller and easier modules, that'd fit 
well together.  Clarisworks, if you've ever used that, has a decent 
interface compared to word...but even that could be more modular.
	While I'm being ambitious (and I certainly am; I have no clue how I 
could do much of any of this when school starts back up again)...I'd also, 
being a musician and all, like to help develop the audio subsystem for 
TUNES, and maybe get some classy music projects going on.
	Not to say that TUNES is really ready for word processing and audio
yet.  =)  But isn't the general theory that apps should be developed alongside
the system, so we can modify both to the best extent possible?  As neat as 
the low-level stuff is, I feel, at this stage in my computer ways, I'm 
more of an app guy than a revolutionary non-kernel maker.

	Any thoughts?  Comments?  Suggestions?  Is TUNES really still alive?

-Chris