Apple II Workstation Card as serial port
schmidtd
the IIe, but now it's time to get down to business.
The scant literature about the card indicates that it can be used for
serial port(s) if you don't feel like networking. I found some
software on the disk that will let you set up one of the ports as
serial, supposedly corresponding to Pascal 1.1 entry points. That
didn't happen to work with my code, nor did it respond to the usual
Ctrl-A/Ctrl-I commands, but that's neither here nor there. My real
question is... is there something that you can do with the card, with
default firmware, to do the equivalent of IN#2 on the SSC or SCC and
have it listen to data coming over the wire? Without having to attach
a 3.5" disk to an Apple IIe?
Hugh Hood
I bought one of these several months ago for potential use with a netatalk
network and found myself wondering the same things about the serial ports.
As you know, the card uses a Zilog 8530 SCC (same as IIGS), but the
"documentation" of the serial port feature of the card really just mentions
firmware compatibility with the Super Serial Card, and makes no mention of
being able directly to address the 8530 registers or even how to select
which of the two ports to use, other than by some configuration program
included with the software accompanying the card.
There was some mention of more hardware/firmware details on the card being
available in the APDA AppleShare Programmer's Guide for the Apple II that
Sheppy now sells on the Syndicomm site, but I can't confirm that.
Maybe Eric will see this and chime in.
Hugh Hood
in article 3b4c4f1e-bf39-4772...@t3g2000vbb.googlegroups.com,
schmidtd at schm...@my-deja.com wrote on 9/22/10 7:20 PM:
schmidtd
> David,
>
> I bought one of these several months ago for potential use with a netatalk
> network and found myself wondering the same things about the serial ports.
>
> As you know, the card uses a Zilog 8530 SCC (same as IIGS), but the
> "documentation" of the serial port feature of the card really just mentions
> firmware compatibility with the Super Serial Card, and makes no mention of
> being able directly to address the 8530 registers or even how to select
> which of the two ports to use, other than by some configuration program
> included with the software accompanying the card.
In the deep research I've done through Google ;-), I have come across
a thread where David Empson dashes all our hopes:
"The Workstation card uses a different serial chip (Z8530 SCC
instead of a 6551), and the Apple II has no direct control of it
anyway
- it is controlled by the 65C02 microprocessor on the workstation
card,
with which the Apple II exchanges data."
-- http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.apple2/browse_frm/thread/abf045bd651e83c
> There was some mention of more hardware/firmware details on the card being
> available in the APDA AppleShare Programmer's Guide for the Apple II that
> Sheppy now sells on the Syndicomm site, but I can't confirm that.
Ah, now that would be cool. With the 6502 running the board, I
imagine you can offload interesting networking stuff to it... but I
also imagine it's completely specific to AppleTalking. ;-)
A2Aviator
flow to the Ethernet cards written about here:
http://apple2.org/AIIEthernet.html
Everything onboard is on the other side of the 65C02, accessible via
that firmware.
Back in the days of the Marinetti MacIP Link Layer development, I
recall using the APDA AppleShare Programmers Guide and for the most
part, having it apply to the Ethernet card as well.
schmidtd
> The Workstation Card is basically it's own entity. Similar in design
> flow to the Ethernet cards written about here:http://apple2.org/AIIEthernet.html
>
> Everything onboard is on the other side of the 65C02, accessible via
> that firmware.
Yep, ok, the Pascal 1.1 entry points seem to work reasonably well (I'm
still not getting recognizable data, but I must be doing something
else wrong). So that's no longer a mystery. I do still wonder if
there's firmware buried in there that will reroute input/output the
way IN#2/PR#2 do for normal serial cards.
schmidtd
Thinking some more... here's the extent of what the manual says about
using serial ports:
"More about the ports: Although the top port is designated for a
LocalTalk cable, both ports can function as serial ports, thus giving
you great flexibility on one card. For example, with one workstation
card installed in your computer, you can connect to a network and also
a local printer. Another way to take advantage of the card is to use
it to connect two serial devices to one slot in your computer."
Errr, how, exactly?
The Pascal entry points take care of one of the ports. (I guess the
bottom one.) But how would they offer serial access to both ports in
one slot?
a2retro
I am not familair with this card but perhaps it is setup something
similar to the onboard serial ports of a //c where both slot 1 and slot
2 are used for the on-board serial ports.
Is there a firmware listing for the card available anywhere?
a2retro
On 9/27/2010 1:12 PM, schmidtd wrote:
This says it emulates a super serial card.
mdj
> Yep, ok, the Pascal 1.1 entry points seem to work reasonably well (I'm
> still not getting recognizable data, but I must be doing something
> else wrong). So that's no longer a mystery. I do still wonder if
> there's firmware buried in there that will reroute input/output the
> way IN#2/PR#2 do for normal serial cards.
If you choose a printer with the network chooser, the SSC firmware
emulator directs your data stream to that network printer, wrapped in
a block of postscript code that emulates the ImageWriter control codes
(no, I'm not kidding).
I've only ever used it in that mode, and it "just works" - I suspect
doing high-speed transfers will be as it is with the normal SSC
firmware; basically impossible.
Matt
schmidtd
Yeah, hacking away at it, I'm getting that feeling too. Oh, well...
it was/is an interesting experiment. That whole Pascal interface
business with the firmware was a nice idea and all, but the speed
penalty is often too high.