A project to reimplement GRiD Server and reverse-engineer the built-in modem of the world's first laptop.
Warning
The server is an experimental, incomplete reimplementation intended for protocol research rather than production use.
The new server implements the GRiDLink transport, VIPC framing, a subset of VFS, and the GRiDMail workflows needed to list, read, and send messages, including attachments. Authentication, multi-user mail routing, most server applications, and full protocol compatibility are not implemented yet.
The GRiD Compass modem drivers for MS-DOS have been reverse-engineered. This work also led to a MAME pull request for HLE emulation of the internal modem.
No original modem schematic or technical documentation is currently available, so some hardware behavior remains uncertain.
The modem was reverse-engineered manually from its MS-DOS and GRiD-OS drivers.
The server software is being analyzed with an LLM through ida-pro-mcp and the project-specific ida-grid-os-loader, with runtime traces and recovered GRiD sources used to verify the results.