December 11, 2025: FRST Computer Exits Stealth Mode [SubHeading: Announcing Aether Data Crystals!] [Sub: Sub: Announcing Aether!] [Sub: Sub: Sub: We (still) sell Plan 9 CyberDecks] ==== Things have been very quiet on the gopher front... I apologize. ## Gopher as "stealth mode" Tonight, FRST Computer exits "stealth mode"... One of the unique advantages of gopher has been its quiet, out-of-the-way quality and I've enjoyed the quiet of this space to "air out" some of my ideas on personal computing, permacomputing, cyberdecks, solarpunk... But tonight, I'm sharing some more details of what I've been up to in my lab and how I plan to expand my reach. (while continuing to prioritize FRST's gopher presence) This is happening -- I'm finally ready to sell you something! :) ## (brief re-hash of my 3-year "nerd snipe" adventure...) I've been chipping away at this thing for a while now, in an attempt, I know, to recapture my own joy of computing. I've become a student of the old school, seeking out the truly elegant engineering designs of the past to inform our present and future -- exploring an alternate timeline, perhaps. In these travels in cyberspace, I've come to take courage in knowing that I'm not alone in this journey and that others have already been hard at work in either preserving or advancing this alternate timeline, promoting still-great-and-maybe- never-more-relevant technologies. What became clear to me is that this alternate timeline deserves the 'grid computing' envisioned by the brilliant Bell Labs team that brought us Plan 9. When Sir Berners-Lee himself has expressed his grave concern that the modern Internet is beyond saving, it's time for us to take it upon ourselves to build the cyber space we deserve. I envision small, local, people (neighbor)-oriented digital networks that overlay naturally against our in-real-life social networks. I've been spending most of my evenings these past couple of years studying packet radio, LoRa, FidoNet, 9P and brushing up on my OSI Model stuff in order to make something _real_ that might help us build such networks. ## Introducing the Aether Data Crystal! That _real_ thing I have ready to sell is something I'm calling the Aether Data Crystal and it is a bulletin board system (BBS) in a microcontroller -- a Nordic nRF5340 microcontroller. This modern take on the BBS is made possible by 9P-over-L2CAP, as provided by my 9p4z library for the Zephyr RTOS. With the help of Claude, I've been able to build out a very serviceable bulletin board server, itself modeled after Plan 9-style "grid" computing concepts. The expressiveness of the 9P protocol opens up a host of possibilities. The 90s Bulletin Board System serves as a perfect model for exploring the unique advantages afforded in using a modern, ubiquitous, and human-centic protocol stack. I will continue to explore a custom LoRa mesh protocol for its sub-ghz and spread-spectrum advantages, but I've found renewed focus on my FRST work in proving out this real-world, practical-today BLE-oriented solution. And while I've come to resent the modern day "world of the app" that Jobs ushered in, I've realized that a simple, intuitive app that is open source and freely distributed will aid greatly in the adoption of my back-to-basics, "personal computing"-era time-travel philosophy. The AetherBBS client software (or, "companion app" in the parlance) provides an intuitive and familiar interface. My current alpha builds are already quite useful, both for SysOps and users. As such, I've decided to go ahead and take preorders for this thing. I've begun schematic / PCB work and hope to have EVT boards back in a few weeks. I'll be working with a pre-certified module, of course, and I'm pretty sure I know the vendor I'll pick there. (hint: it's one that offers a power-amplified footprint-compatible variant sku ;) ) I should have all of the essential bits worked out in short order and hope to be sending out to early "backers" by EOY. If you are interested, place your preorder by using the gopher store - (available at gopher://frstcomputer.com) - ## Embracing the (smol) web! Exiting stealth mode will mean embracing the web, finally... I've had some FRST "hints" up on my personal web sites for a bit now, of course, but along with this post, I'm launching a basic "smolweb" website for FRST, which will allow me to really promote FRST more broadly. With the gopher presence prioritized, I've made the website intentionally abbreviated. I was at least able to adapt the gopher-commerce cart system for the new website, so web visitors can place their orders -- now backed by a business Venmo account. Another note about the site: Having successfully proven the efficiency and compatibility of an imagemap-based site, (see sharpcreative.tv) I've adopted the same approach for the new FRST site. This is also meant to signal FRST's retro-inclusive values. I truly want to cater to those few of us that actually use our old computers regularly in our everyday personal computing. (NOTE: I will absolutely give discounts to people that place their orders with their interesting, unique retrocomputers.) If you happen to have such a machine, you can expect to be able to successfully order a personal computer or Bluetooth BBS with your old browser, with its outdated cipher suite. ;) I've personally tested the site on the following: - lynx, links2, w3m, netsurf, mothra - Netscape Communicator 4.7 (Mac OS 9), Internet Explorer 5.0 (OS 9) - OmniWeb for Tiger, Safari (a bunch of them), Firefox - Opera 3 for Windows for Workgroups 3.11 It doesn't require CSS or Javascript. It has very minimal markup. And if the images are too heavy, there's an even smol-er smolweb option. (my 486 appreciated this) With this new, lightweight-and-highly-compatible site launched, I can feel comfortable promoting FRST more broadly -- on Mastodon, at least. ## Aether Oh, and what's with this 'Aether' business, eh? Well, that's just the name I've been working with to describe the "mesh" portion of the experimental networking stack I've been sketching out. It's meant to work over different RF links and is inspired by the store-and-forward capabilities of FidoNet. I've been slowly developing a network simulator, written in Go, to validate this protocol stack and provide a test-bed for experimentation. This simulator actually forms the basis for the network chat functionality (a work in progress) of my web-based PCD68 emulator demo ROM at https://jonsharp.net. AetherBBS does not incorporate any of this mesh stack, focused instead on providing individual, hyper-local instances in which to build thriving "offline" communities. This is a design feature, in fact, allowing for autonomy and sovereignty of data, determined by the members of a each community. As mesh-oriented capabilties become available to AetherBBS SysOps, communities will remain in control of how they choose to participate with a broader Aether mesh community. ## We still sell Plan 9 CyberDecks Oh, and yes, we still sell Plan 9 CyberDecks! That is, after nearly two years of dragging my own handmade cyberdecks around the world, I'm comfortable promoting this more broadly, as well. I expect the Data Crystal to become the more popular FRST offering, but I'd love for more people to experience the joys of a simpler form of personal computing -- embracing software zen. (TODO: 9front bluetooth driver for native AetherBBS support -- order one now and help make that development effort a priority! ;) ) ## To be continued... There will be more to come... .