vm02: calling all Apple IIcs
David Schmenk
particular configuration to test with. I have formalized a device
driver interface and written some test drivers for console, mouse, and
the super serial card. The serial driver is stubbed out, but I have
been spending a lot of time with the mouse card and IIc mouse
implementation. Boy, have I learned a lot. The mouse card is quite a
piece of work. They bundled up just about every Apple II trick into one
card. I now have VBL interrupts updating the time base so now
operations like sleep() actually work for the correct time (even with
accelerators). As a side benefit, keyboard input is very responsive (as
long as you can't type 60 characters/second). However, due to the
vastly different implementations across the card and IIc varieties, I
want to make sure I have it right before moving ahead.
http://schmenk.is-a-geek.com/tarfiles/VM02ALPHA2.DSK.ZIP
is the disk image. It doesn't have all the demos of the past releases
(they should all work) except for HELLOWORLD, the multi-threading demo.
This won't work on emulated mouse cards unless it emulates the VBL
interrupt; you will have to try it on real hardware with a mouse card or
a IIc/IIc+. If you don't have a mouse card, it will fall back to the
software timing and run fine. You will know it is getting VBL
interrupts due to the very annoying 30Hz buzz. I'm looking to see if
the HELLOWORLD demo bounces the text across the screen and exits cleanly
when ESC is pressed.
If anyone can run this on real hardware with mouse card or a IIc, I
would really like to get feedback. I have currently tested on a II+.
enhanced IIe, and a 3.5 drive ROM IIc.
If this is successful, I will finish the serial card driver and put
together a simple terminal program capable of 9600 baud (without
dropping characters), written in Java, for the beta release.
Thanks for everyones help,
Dave...
Tom Greene
I tried it out on a couple of my IIc's... on the original "255" ROM
and the memory expansion "3" ROM, it runs fine for about 30 seconds,
then the text freezes and it stops resonding to keystrokes (but the
buzz continues). On the IIc+ it ran for a few minutes with no apparent
problems.
Tom
David Schmenk
Thanks Tom-
Interesting. Usually the buzz stops too. This will be more of a
challenge than I thought :-(
Dave...