Creating peripheral cards for the Apple II

[Chris Torrence]

Hi all,

Does someone have a recommendation for a book or website on creating peripheral cards for the Apple II? I already have the Apple ][ Reference Manual, Inside the Apple //e, and Understanding the Apple II.

I'm really looking for a book that has hardware examples - i.e. what would a "typical" peripheral card look like - what chip(s) to use for peripheral card ROM space, how to handle the address and data bus, etc. In other words, how does someone learn how to build cards like the Apple II Pi, or the SD Disk ][?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers,
Chris

[awanderin]

Here are a couple of sites from my bookmarks that still work:

An IDE interface, with commentary and schematics:
http://s.guillard.free.fr/Apple2IDE/Apple2IDE.htm

A FlashROM board:
http://redskulldc.50megs.com/Flashrom/Flashrom.html


Some of the Apple II Technical Notes are helpful too.

--
Jerry awanderin at gmail dot com

[Chris Torrence]

On Thursday, January 8, 2015 at 8:49:12 PM UTC-7, awanderin wrote:
>
> Here are a couple of sites from my bookmarks that still work:
>
> An IDE interface, with commentary and schematics:
> http://s.guillard.free.fr/Apple2IDE/Apple2IDE.htm
>
> A FlashROM board:
> http://redskulldc.50megs.com/Flashrom/Flashrom.html
>
>
> Some of the Apple II Technical Notes are helpful too.
>
> --
> Jerry awanderin at gmail dot com

Thanks Jerry! Those look like very cool projects. Anyone else have any suggestions?
-Chris

[mdj]

On Friday, 9 January 2015 02:02:20 UTC+10, Chris Torrence wrote:

> I'm really looking for a book that has hardware examples - i.e. what would a "typical" peripheral card look like - what chip(s) to use for peripheral card ROM space, how to handle the address and data bus, etc. In other words, how does someone learn how to build cards like the Apple II Pi, or the SD Disk ][?

Most of Apple's earlier peripheral cards had published schematics. A good way is to examine the schematic of a card that has similarities to the one you're designing. For instance, the Apple II Pi card is ostensibly a 'cut down' Super Serial Card, and you can find the schematic for the SSC in the early SSC manual (and perhaps the later ones, though I've not checked).

The best way to learn though, is to "just do it". The Apple II's are pretty hardy machines, and *reasonably* difficult to kill. I've had great success, and not one dead Apple II (yet), prototyping on breadboards right over the slots.

Of course, an understanding of digital electronics is necessary, and in particular you need to understand the differences between the theoretical models, and how particular implementations of digital logic behave "in practice". Don Lancaster's "TTL Cookbook" taught me much of what I know about designing with 74(LS) series logic, and has some excellent, pithy explanations of the design rules you need to follow regarding power, buffering, fanout, etc. as well as some brillant example digital designs, and a reasonable catalog of the available logic in that family.

So I would say grab that book, grab a breadboard or 2, and a bag of logic chips and start experimenting. There is no substitute for visceral learning that comes from putting a chip through its functional paces with nothing other than the chip itself, some switches and LED's to see the results, and then once you've done that, plug it into the Gameport and drive it with the II. Then try it in a slot.

You can interface an amazing array of stuff to the Apple II bus using nothing other than a 74(LS)245 bus transceiver to buffer the data bus, and a 74(LS)138 decoder.

Don't forget to pull up/down unused IO and above all else, have fun!

Matt

[Alex Freed]

On 1/8/2015 9:06 PM, mdj wrote:
>
> You can interface an amazing array of stuff to the Apple II bus using nothing other
> than a 74(LS)245 bus transceiver to buffer the data bus, and a
74(LS)138 decoder.
>

I would add a 74LS374 (or 74HCT574 if you live in the 21st century)
latch to the mix. Enough to light up some LEDs from BASIC commands.

-Alex.

[mwillegal]

First review Apple doc that came with their prototyping board. I think that this is the best overview of major features of the peripheral interface that I've seen.

scans of the pages can be found on my blog

http://www.willegal.net/blog/?p=1447

Second is review my superproto page. This prototyping card implements most of the fundemental features that are described in the doc.

http://willegal.net/superproto/index.php?title=Main_Page

There are a number of quirks with the Apple II peripheral interface, so I'd also recommend that you review the Apple II tech notes, which can be found online. There is one that covers interfacing the 6522 and another with information about ground and power planes on peripheral cards that may be of interest.

http://www.downloads.reactivemicro.com/Public/Apple%20II%20Items/Documentation/Manuals/Apple%20II%20Technical%20Notes/The%20Apple%20II%20Technical%20Notes.htm


Where you go from there depends alot upon your goals and expertise.

regards,
Mike Willegal

[Chris Torrence]

Thanks Matt, Alex, and Mike. These are all great suggestions. I'll let you know how it goes!
-Chris

[Scott Alfter]

In article <bca3fbb1-593e-4753...@googlegroups.com>,

mwillegal <mi...@willegal.net> wrote:
>First review Apple doc that came with their prototyping board. I think
>that this is the best overview of major features of the peripheral
>interface that I've seen.
>
>scans of the pages can be found on my blog
>
>http://www.willegal.net/blog/?p=1447

I've made a PDF of that...the OCR isn't so good, but at least the images are
all bound into one file:

https://home.alfter.us/owncloud/public.php?service=files&t=5c38efab754cbb5d9c2d1c1bb5cc14a1

>There are a number of quirks with the Apple II peripheral interface, so
>I'd also recommend that you review the Apple II tech notes, which can be
>found online. There is one that covers interfacing the 6522 and another
>with information about ground and power planes on peripheral cards that
>may be of interest.
>
>http://www.downloads.reactivemicro.com/Public/Apple%20II%20Items/Documentation/Manuals/Apple%20II%20Technical%20Notes/The%20Apple%20II%20Technical%20Notes.htm

Except for the gno.org link, all the links on that page are 404. I suspect
I have these stashed away on some floppies (or maybe CDs) somewhere, but I
went ahead and pulled down a copy from gno.org. They're in this tarball:

https://home.alfter.us/owncloud/public.php?service=files&t=68ba848d6031c0326f270b8b5df1e218

_/_
/ v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail)
(IIGS( https://alfter.us/ Top-posting!
\_^_/ >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?

[mdj]

On Friday, 9 January 2015 16:24:47 UTC+10, Alex Freed wrote:

> I would add a 74LS374 (or 74HCT574 if you live in the 21st century)
> latch to the mix. Enough to light up some LEDs from BASIC commands.

Completely agree - in fact that's exactly the path I followed when I started experimenting - after using a 74164 to shift a byte of data out of an Annunciator on the gameport :-)

The 574 is much easier to work with particularly when prototyping than the 374 when the target is an 8 bit machine. They're electrically identical, but the pinouts of the 574 are arranged as a bus rather than 'per latch' on the 374.

Using HCT over LS is probably better advice too - certainly less surprises will result when a modern yet 5V CMOS part just doesn't work, probably intermittently. The catch for new punters though is that most 'hobbyist' level electronics stores (at least in AU) only stock LS and HC families, and usually only a subset of them at that. I have almost a full set of HCT parts in DIP, but I acquired mine over years on eBay as I needed them.

A good simple lesson plan might be:

1. Hook up a 245 to the data bus, and a 574 to it and /DEVSEL. Use LED's on the 574 to confirm you can write a byte to any IO location for the slot and store it in the 574.

2. Add a 138 decoder so the 574 is only active on IO location 0

3. The 574 is also active on IO location 8. How can we fix that ?

4. Reading the location of the 574 results in its contents being scrambled. How an we fix that ?

5. Now that it's fixed, can we also see a way to also allow the Apple to read the contents of the 574 ?

Congratulations, your Apple now has 1 extra byte of memory, and you have learned a great many things :-)

Matt

[D Finnigan]

Chris Torrence wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Does someone have a recommendation for a book or website on creating
> peripheral cards for the Apple II? I already have the Apple ][ Reference
> Manual, Inside the Apple //e, and Understanding the Apple II.
>
> I'm really looking for a book that has hardware examples - i.e. what would
> a "typical" peripheral card look like - what chip(s) to use for peripheral
> card ROM space, how to handle the address and data bus, etc. In other
> words, how does someone learn how to build cards like the Apple II Pi, or
> the SD Disk ][?

Try a book called "Apple Interfacing" by Titus and Titus. It's used on
Amazon.com for 1 cent. I have a copy of it. You may as well buy one too.

Try also "Programming And Interfacing The Apple, With Experiments" by Marvin
de Jong, a magazine article:
<http://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue8/3054_1_PROGRAMMING_AND_INTERFACING_THE_APPLE_WITH_EXPERIMENTS.php>

And thirdly, try "Programming and Interfacing the 6502: With Experiments" by
the same auhor. I have this book too. It teaches 6502 as well.



Programming And Interfacing The Apple, With Experiments

Marvin L. De Jong
Department of Mathematics - Physics
The School Of the Ozarks
Pl. Lookout, MO 65726

Introduction

When the Apple microcomputer is compared with other popular microcomputers,
one of its most attractive features is the ease with which it can be
interfaced to devices in the outside world. Particularly important in this
connection are those eight beautiful card slots in the Apple. The "black
box" philosophy of the designers of the TRS-80 leaves much to be desired in
scientific, educational, or industrial applications.

In this article we will describe a circuit to be built on a peripheral card
that fits in any of the eight card slots in the Apple. The circuit provides
the user with one eight-bit input port and one eight-bit output port (with
possibilities for expansion). The circuit is built with readily available
components, and the output port is also attached to eight LEDs so the user
can visualize the state of the bits. The bit values of the input port may be
controlled with an eight element DIP switch, or by devices of the user's own
choice, such as an A/D converter.

My main reason for designing this circuit was to provide Apple owners with
the experiments in my book Programming & Interfacing the 6502, With
Experiments. This book was originally based on the KIM-1, SYM-1, and the AIM
65, but with the I/O board described in this article, the book can be used
in conjunction with Apple computers. So, if you are interested in learning
assembly language programming in conjunction with my book, this I/O board
may make the task a little easier. If you are not interested in the book,
the I/O board described here will be of interest if you wish to interface
your Apple computer to devices like A/D and D/A converters, stepper motors,
transmitters, and a variety of other devices.

--
]DF$
Apple II Book: http://macgui.com/newa2guide/
Usenet: http://macgui.com/usenet/ <-- get posts by email!
Apple II Web & Blog hosting: http://a2hq.com/

[Chris Torrence]

Thanks David, Matt, and Scott,
Books and chips are on order! I'll let you know how it goes.
Cheers,
Chris

[cb meeks]

Chris,

Sorry to drum up an old thread. I'm interested in starting up a small peripheral card using a 65C22. I was wondering if you ever got anything up and going? Or, better yet, ever thought about doing a video on creating a simple card for the IIe?

Thanks!

[groink_hi]

On Thursday, September 13, 2018 at 10:12:12 AM UTC-10, cb meeks wrote:
> Sorry to drum up an old thread. I'm interested in starting up a small peripheral card using a 65C22. I was wondering if you ever got anything up and going? Or, better yet, ever thought about doing a video on creating a simple card for the IIe?

http://filedump.glitchwrks.com/manuals/john_bell/6522_parallel_interface.pdf

http://filedump.glitchwrks.com/manuals/john_bell/6522_parallel_interface_review.pdf

http://forum.6502.org/viewtopic.php?p=895 (explains difference between 65C22 and 6522)

Personally, I've never touched the CMOS version 65C22.

[a2retro]

Just an FYI : I happen to be looking at teh Apple IIgs #28
Interface Card Design Guidelines and noticed the dimensions of the standard 50 pin slot connector are wrong.

They are listed as 2.95 inches when it should be 2.59 inches

[Anthony Adverse]

Does anyone have a KiCad template for a 2 card, they'd like to share?

A

[cb meeks]

On Tuesday, September 25, 2018 at 10:00:10 AM UTC-4, Anthony Adverse wrote:
> Does anyone have a KiCad template for a 2 card, they'd like to share?
>
> A

Check this one out:

https://gitlab.com/salfter/a2gpio

It's by Scott Alfter (a2gpio)

[Bob Darlington]

I confirm the technical docs are WRONG. 2.590" to 2.600" seems fine. My Mockingboard is 2.600 (or was it the Uthernet?).

-Bob

[Ted Thompson]

The dimension is right, the arrows are wrong... Or the ASCII art is poor. The 2.95" dimension is from the "front" of the edge connector to the rear of the entire board, I saw a poor/cut off PDF scan that made it clearer. The dimensions are from a common origin, as is correct practice, and it is formed by the intersection of the rear most edge of the board and the very bottom of the edge connector - a location that is in open space due to the outline of the board.