Teletype and C64

[o.funk...@gmail.com]

Hi folks,
I have a little question: I know that you can connect a teletype to the RS232 on the userport. You also can set the port to 50 baud, 5 bit with 1 Startbit and 2 Stopbits.

Is it possible to redirect all text that ist normally shown on the monitor to the teletype and use it as a printer? I woould like to run some text adventures over the C64 on the teletype for Maker Faire.

Since the C64 still has the capability to operate with TTY that should be possible.

Thanks for your advise.

[Andreas Kohlbach]

I don't know. But back at the day I used a "open 4,..." command to
redirect what ever you typed on the keyboard ended up on a printer. I
would therefore assume a similar command would be able to redirect a data
stream to a teletype machine.
--
Andreas

My random toughts and comments
https://news-commentaries.blogspot.com/

[Robert Roland]

On Wed, 27 Jun 2018 01:33:24 -0700 (PDT), o.funk...@gmail.com
wrote:

>Is it possible to redirect all text that ist normally shown on the monitor to the teletype and use it as a printer? I woould like to run some text adventures over the C64 on the teletype for Maker Faire.

When listing disk directories to paper, I used this:

http://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=24138

I do not know if it would work with your adventure game, though. There
are many different ways to send text to the screen, and the CMD
command may not support them all.
--
RoRo

[Henning Bekel]

The RS232 Device number is 2. You should be able to redirect BASIC prints (and everything else that prints via the Kernal CHROUT routine) to the device. If the program does not use the kernal CHROUT routine but instead pokes directly to screen memory, you're out of luck. CMD only sets the default output device used by CHROUT.

See https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/RS-232 for details on configuring and opening the device. After opening, you need to issue CMD 2 to change the default device for all print statements.

I'm not sure whether RUNning a BASIC program will reset the default output device for CHROUT. If so, you will need to modify the program accordingly.

[Ross Ridge]

<o.funk...@gmail.com> wrote:
>I have a little question: I know that you can connect a teletype to the
>RS232 on the userport. You also can set the port to 50 baud, 5 bit with
>1 Startbit and 2 Stopbits.

Note that you'll need hardware to convert the userport's TTL levels into
either RS232 levels or current loop signalling, depending on what the
teletype requires.

>Is it possible to redirect all text that ist normally shown on the
>monitor to the teletype and use it as a printer? I woould like to run
>some text adventures over the C64 on the teletype for Maker Faire.
>
>Since the C64 still has the capability to operate with TTY that should
>be possible.

If need to do this on a Commodore 64 then you'll nned to hack up the game
in some way to use the serial port. As mentioned in other posts you might
be able to use BASIC's CMD to redirect the game's output to the serial
port, but there's no command for redirecting input. As I recall the
early Infocom games for the C64 used the standard kernal I/O routines,
and it's not too hard to hack the later Infocom games to also use them,
so it wouldn't be that difficult of a hack. Still you'll need to know
6502 assembly.

If you're just trying to a get a text adventure to work a on teletype
then your best bet would be use one of the Infocom Z-machine emulators
(eg. Frotz) on some sort of Linux, Windows or even MS-DOS computer with
a standard RS232 serial port. You may still need some sort of hardware
to convert standard RS232 levels to the current loop signalling many
teletypes used.

--
l/ // Ross Ridge -- The Great HTMU
[oo][oo] rri...@csclub.uwaterloo.ca
-()-/()/ http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~rridge/
db //

[Anachronist]

This sounds really cool, let us know if you get it working! c6NACHRON c6ST c9| caBS caNTHE caBS