Magic Internet Kit

Real connectivity made real easy

The Magic Internet Kit is a complete development kit for creating Magic Cap applications that communicate in a variety of ways. The heart of the Magic Internet Kit is a powerful yet easy-to-use object framework that provides:
  • TCP/IP support for writing full-featured Internet/Intranet applications.

  • Supporting protocols for TCP/IP such as PPP, with PAP and CHAP authentication, and DNS for resolving host names.

  • Serial communications over a communicator's built-in modem or MagicBus port.

  • PPP and serial support for many external modems, including Metricom's Ricochet wireless modem, U.S. Robotics, and Supra modems.

Additionally, the Kit provides an automated application creation tool that lets you quickly select the different types of framework support that you desire and "clone" a template to start from. This lets you get up and running with a few mouse clicks!

Powerful, easy-to-use communicating object framework

If you can write a Magic Cap application, you can write a communicating Magic Cap application. The top-level programming interfaces for the Magic Internet Kit consist of three methods that let an application create and destroy data streams using any of the supported communications protocols. Creating a TCP/IP connection using dialup PPP with CHAP authentication and DNS name resolution is just as easy as opening the serial port.

The Magic Internet Kit's framework evolved from a sample application that was released in October of 1995. This sample code included serial and TCP/IP communications capabilities, and it has been utilized as the core of many shipping applications, including General Magic's Presto!Mail and Presto!Links products. The result of this evolution is a kit whose core protocol stack has nearly a year of use by both General Magic and third-party developers.

Automated application creation

With the Magic Internet Kit's New Comms App helper tool, creating applications that take advantage of the Kit's framework and built-in templates is a snap. This helper tool lets you select which kinds of connection types you want to use, serial and/or TCP/IP, and the hardware you want to use for those connections: a communicator's built-in modem, MagicBus port, an external modem connected to the MagicBus port, and/or a Xircom Netwave wireless ethernet PC Card.

Once you check off the types of framework support that you want for your new application, you can choose from one of three template applications to start from. These range from an empty template that just provides an empty scene in Magic Cap's hallway to a full TTY terminal template that you can build and use to communicate right out of the box!

Download the Kit now!
The Magic Internet Kit is freely available for downloading from this web site and is also included with the Metrowerks CodeWarrior Gold 10 development environment. The kit is an addition to the MPW-based Magic Cap development tools included with CodeWarrior. To find out more about these tools visit the Magic Cap Development Overview web pages.

Online Documentation
The Magic Internet Kit Programmer's Guide tells you all about the Kit and how to use it to create your own communication-savvy applications. The Guide starts from the very beginning with creating a new application, progresses into using the class framework, and goes all the way into the low-level details of how the Kit is implemented. You can read this document on the web or download an Adobe Acrobat PDF file for viewing and printing.

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