Hi everyone, I'm the author of this thing. And thank you @Pierre32 for starting this thread, not to mention the extensive testing and feedback you've already helped me with. Invaluable stuff!
This got a wee bit of media today on RetroRGB for MiSTer and PlayStation 2 compatibility, but I want to emphasise that those projects are only a small part of what I'm aiming for.
I'm hoping I can get some good feedback from VOGONS members on the computing side. The posts above cover most of what's working now, and this is the list of things I want to add (or at least research):
https://github.com/danmons/retronas/blob/main/IDEAS.md
The goal is to make a device that's a central hub for anything. I want to be able to have a Win95 machine connect to archive.org and pull down files, or a UNIX System V machine NFSv2 connect for storage, or an Amiga pppd connect and pull files down via HTTP or FTP, or a DOS machine share files via EtherDFS, or an Apple II GS running GS/OS System 6 copying files over AppleTalk, and all at the same time as bleeding edge Windows/Mac/Linux desktops using it to push and pull files via SMB/FTP/SFTP/AFP or other modern protocols. Rinse and repeat for anything that ever had some sort of network/IO/communication hardware, really.
Obviously all of these things exist - I'm not "creating" anything here. I'm just collating a large amount of open source stuff developed by people much, much smarter than me, and bundling them all together in one place in a way that's hopefully a little easier than 100% DIY for people who aren't Linux users normally. The interface admittedly sucks (SSH in and use dialog menus), but I've already got offers from people to extend it to a web interface, so that's nice. I'm not a web dev, so I'll stick to the current menus as my primary focus.
I've got various USB and GPIO/TTL serial devices sitting on my desk right now, so R233 / null modem / ppp support is high on my want list. I have DOS and Win9X equipment I can test. The goal there is to have them communicating over file sharing protocols and/or having Internet access. After that, I need help from anyone with a real Amiga, AtariST or other device with serial/ppp compatibility to test things further.
Since going public I've also had people offer ideas things I forgot existed (DECnet was one), or had never heard of (TNFS for ZX Spectrum with Spectranet/FujiNet). These are exactly the sorts of things I want to add in. I also found someone working on a Netatalk2.X modernisation project (backporting fixes and enhancements, and fixing all the good stuff the upstream project removed in Netatalk3.X), which I've been testing with Apple IIGS, System 6, OS9 and OSX with good success rates.
On the documentation side, I've been busy making videos for as many of the services on offer as possible. A big missing piece right now is EtherDFS+FAT, where I need to do a much better job of explaining how to have a dedicated FAT mount for that. I want to include (non-mandatory) options like:
* Partitioning a single disk into mixed ext4 and FAT
* Using LVM to volume manage a disk wit a dedicated FAT volume
* Create a loopback file formatted as FAT and mounted in the EtherDFS export location
* Using a FAT-formatted USB stick for EtherDFS, mounted below the RetroNAS tree running standard ext4
It's these things that I hope will make the tool more useful to people (or even if they never use it, and want to roll their own solution, that's cool too).
The project is MIT licensed. If people want to pinch my installers, compiler scripts, Ansible code (the stuff that drives most of the installers), configuration files or whatever, be my guest. As above, I don't feel I've really created anything here per se, more just assembled a bunch of really cool things written by much smarter people.
The GitHub is open to discussions and issues, and likewise I'll check in here frequently for feedback, ideas, criticisms or whatever is on offer.
The overwhelming goal is inclusion - as many systems as possible, and in a way that's as cheap/free as possible (RPi, old computer, VM, etc as the target platform to deploy on). Worth mentioning that security is almost non-existent. Everything runs pretty open with very little in the way of security or encryption due to the era of protocols on offer. But I figure audiences like VOGONS are more than well versed in managing old computers inside modern networks, and don't need lecturing about that.
So again, thank you Pierre32 for the blurb and the assistance to date. And thanks in advance to anyone here who is willing to give it a try, or offer feedback and ideas either here or on GitHub.