SSI Board LP Printer driver.

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norberto...@koyado.com

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Oct 18, 2021, 4:12:44 AM10/18/21
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I have Glenn Parallel printer to test the SSI board with my parallel printer. I was wondering if someone has the following LP printer driver?

 

MX8011.DVD - An Epson MX-80 printer driver for an Z89-11 interface. (Parallel)

 

Thanks,

Norberto

glenn.f...@gmail.com

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Oct 18, 2021, 7:17:48 AM10/18/21
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I think the best starting point is Bill Lindley’s universal printer driver, which he has made available for hobby use:

 

http://www.wlindley.com/#heritage

 

There are instructions but you want the MX8255.DVD driver.  I haven’t tried this yet myself but I will do so. (Lindley is a subscriber to this list)

 

I believe Dean  Gibson (Ultimeth) also wrote a universal printer driver (I saw either an old ad or an announcement in Hscoop) but I’m not aware of any place to find that (anyone here know?)

 

HUG had an MX80 driver (disk 885-1105, on Les’ site) but only for serial interface.

 

I have been able to use the Secured Computer Systems driver (on your site)

http://koyado.com/Heathkit/H-89_Serial_Parallel_Card.html

with the 8255 PPIO board and could document that.  I think main trick was to figure out the wiring (pic here).  As I recall, it has some support for MX 80 functionality

 

for completeness it would be nice to know of any other 8255 and/or MX 80 drivers.  Curious who made/distributed the “MX8011.DVD” driver you refer to…

 

  • Glenn

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norberto...@koyado.com

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Oct 18, 2021, 11:29:52 AM10/18/21
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Thanks!

 

The MX8011.DVD driver is mentioned in the HDOS 3.0 Software Reference Manual. I haven’t check out HDOS 3.0.

 

Thanks,

Norberto

glenn.f...@gmail.com

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Oct 18, 2021, 6:10:54 PM10/18/21
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Ah...  I pulled the attached off the distribution for HDOS 3.0 from Les’ site.  There appears to be minimal documentation in the HDOS 3.02 manual on this.  I will give it a try and see if I can get it working.  I still think the Lindley driver is probably the way to go (it’s even called out in the HDOS 3 doc’s!)

 

Interestingly this appears to have been eliminated in the final (3.02) release…

 

I too haven’t spent much time with HDOS 3.  That may be true of many of us.  By the time it came out most of us were probably tinkering with Z100s (I know I was).  But I loaded it on Big Blue for VCF so I’m going to dig further and get smart on what’s there.  Its already apparent that a LOT of work went into putting it all together!

MX80DVD.H8A
MX8011.DVD
U8255.ACM
DVDIO2.ACM

norberto.collado koyado.com

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Oct 18, 2021, 6:19:42 PM10/18/21
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Thanks, Glenn, for finding the driver. It should work with HDOS 2.0; correct or it needs HDOS 3.0? 

Norberto

Glenn Roberts

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Oct 18, 2021, 6:43:35 PM10/18/21
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I’m pretty sure it’ll work fine in 2.0. The basic OS interface is the same.

Sent from my iPad

On Oct 18, 2021, at 6:20 PM, norberto.collado koyado.com <norberto...@koyado.com> wrote:



norberto.collado koyado.com

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Oct 18, 2021, 7:11:28 PM10/18/21
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Great! I will give it a spin this week with my new Epson printer I bought several years ago.

From: se...@googlegroups.com <se...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Glenn Roberts <glenn.f...@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, October 18, 2021 3:43 PM
To: se...@googlegroups.com <se...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [sebhc] SSI Board LP Printer driver.
 

glenn.f...@gmail.com

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Oct 18, 2021, 9:36:32 PM10/18/21
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You may want to try my disassembled version of PARLP.ASM (the SCS “two thirds” driver from koyado.com).  I got this working last spring with the PPIO 8255 board.  I can help with this. 

 

I’ll re-baseline all this and make sure I know what works, cable configuration, etc…

PARLP.ASM

Terry Smedley

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Oct 19, 2021, 2:49:35 PM10/19/21
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Glenn:

The parallel port on the prototype System Support board that Norberto is using has different pinouts from the 82C55 board and uses a slightly modified driver.  The SSI board parallel port is designed to be software compatible with the Z89-11 I/O card, and hardware compatible with a standard IBM PC header to DB25 cable.  The SSI parallel port also uses 74LS07 line drivers (as did the Z89-11) to get around the 2.5ma drive limit of the bare 82C55.

Making the SSI port compatible with the Z89-11 card meant using the 8255 Port "C" pin assignments that Heath used on that card.  Your PARLP.ASM that we worked on this Spring for the 82C55 card was modified to reflect the SSI pinouts, and includes conditional assembly for 8255 Mode 0 or Mode 1.  I prefer Mode 1 because that mode latches the printer ACK, so the concern about missing a very short ACK pulse during polling is eliminated.  

A standard IBM PC parallel port cable connects to the 2x13 header on the System Support board.  No custom cable fabrication is needed.  This is the cable that Norberto is using:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B009JXK5UE (There is nothing unique about that choice - any IBM parallel header cable would work).

The prototype board and modified Mode 1 driver have been tested with a Royal daisywheel printer and a Brother laser printer.  Norberto will be testing it soon with an Epson printer.

I've attached a table of the pinouts used by the Z89-11/SSI parallel port, and the control word used to initialize the 8255 in mixed Mode 1 (Port A output) + Mode 0 (Port B input).  The revised source for the driver from a recent assembly is also attached.

Terry
Parallel Printer Signal Definitions.pdf
PARLPSS.ASM

Glenn Roberts

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Oct 19, 2021, 9:58:48 PM10/19/21
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Thanks for the clarification Terry.  your posts are always educational!  My bad for assuming the two ports were equivalent.  Will be an interesting board!

norberto...@koyado.com

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Oct 20, 2021, 1:47:09 AM10/20/21
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Great news! I connected my LX-300+II printer which I bought new in Office Max in 2016 and it worked nicely under HDOS. I just setup the LP: flag to “MX80” and printed a page. I’m using the LP HDOS driver that Terry S. provided. It worked great. Today you can still buy Epson dot matrix printers in Amazon.  Amazon.com: Epson C11CC24001 LX-350 Dot Matrix Printer - 9 pin - Up to 347 char/sec - Parallel/Serial/USB : Office Products

 

The connection is very simple to the LX printer. From printer DB25 cable to 2x13 header on the System Support board cable (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B009JXK5UE). No more headaches customizing the cable to attached to the board as in the SCS solution. I wish I had known before the Z89-11 I/O card as it is a nice solution.

 

This concludes testing the SSI board. I just need to verify the updated H8SPD.ABS file and if no issues with current HW, then I will release the SSI board for production.

 

My experience with the SSI board:

 

The Music section worked nicely and no digital noise on the speaker detected. I had the speaker on top of the board checking for noise, but it was very clean. That was a great design back them with such analog filters. We added the PC stereo connector and from there to a Bluetooth speaker. I never had a HA-8-2 Music Synthesizer board before. Had a blast from the past.

 

I’m using one of the analog channels to measure the backplane voltage and it works great.

 

The I/O wait state is working fine which allows the user to run the Z67-IDE+ at 16MHz when using the On-board memory on the Z80 board. I’m trying to get more margin on the HW to do the same with the 512KB board (WIP). I want to boot HDOS or CP/M from the Z67-IDE+ at 16MHz by using the SSI board along with the 512KB board. Any H8 slow device will work at such speed as well.

 

There is a Memory Wait state circuit, but no need to use it as it slows down the system when running at 16MHz.

 

The H8 Front Panel speed LED circuit is working fine.

 

The APU is working great. It needs a heatsink as it gets very hot.

 

Terry S. found that we need to rework the Z80 V4 board with a simple fix to avoid double clocking the USB VDIP1 module. Same fix needs to be apply to the new H17/H37/H67 controllers. The fix improves the reliability of such boards when pushing them to 16MHz by eliminating such double clocking. More information on such reworks will be provided.

 

I want to thank Terry S. as he was the main person behind the SSI board. He provided block diagrams, timing measurements, files, etc., to create such great board. I want to thank him for all his support during the testing/debugging of such board. I know he is now anxious to start working on the HA-8-3 clone using his wireless joystick to play games on the big monitor. I hope Les can get me Pacman working on the HA-8-3 clone using the big screen with sound and the joystick. 😊

 

This is my first time booting the Z67-IDE+ at 16MHz with the Z80 on-board memory. Very fast and stable. Thanks Terry S. for such SSI board. Also this setup allows me to test the new H8 backplane at 16MHz to verify it’s reliability at such speeds.

 

 

 

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norberto...@koyado.com

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Oct 20, 2021, 2:59:16 AM10/20/21
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LP Printer cable connectors pin-out:

 

 

From: norberto...@koyado.com <norberto...@koyado.com>
Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 2021 10:47 PM
To: 'se...@googlegroups.com' <se...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: [sebhc] SSI Board LP Printer driver.

 

Great news! I connected my LX-300+II printer which I bought new in Office Max in 2016 and it worked nicely under HDOS. I just setup the LP: flag to “MX80” and printed a page. I’m using the LP HDOS driver that Terry S. provided. It worked great. Today you can still buy Epson dot matrix printers in Amazon.  Amazon.com: Epson C11CC24001 LX-350 Dot Matrix Printer - 9 pin - Up to 347 char/sec - Parallel/Serial/USB : Office Products

 

The connection is very simple to the LX printer. From printer DB25 cable to 2x13 header on the System Support board cable (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B009JXK5UE). No more headaches customizing the cable to attached to the board as in the SCS solution. I wish I had known before the Z89-11 I/O card as it is a nice solution.

 

This concludes testing the SSI board. I just need to verify the updated H8SPD.ABS file and if no issues with current HW, then I will release the SSI board for production.

 

My experience with the SSI board:

 

The Music section worked nicely and no digital noise on the speaker detected. I had the speaker on top of the board checking for noise, but it was very clean. That was a great design back them with such analog filters. We added the PC stereo connector and from there to a Bluetooth speaker. I never had a HA-8-2 Music Synthesizer board before. Had a blast from the past.

 

I’m using one of the analog channels to measure the backplane voltage and it works great.

 

The I/O wait state is working fine which allows the user to run the Z67-IDE+ at 16MHz when using the On-board memory on the Z80 board. I’m trying to get more margin on the HW to do the same with the 512KB board (WIP). I want to boot HDOS or CP/M from the Z67-IDE+ at 16MHz by using the SSI board along with the 512KB board. Any H8 slow device will work at such speed as well.

 

There is a Memory Wait state circuit, but no need to use it as it slows down the system when running at 16MHz.

 

The H8 Front Panel speed LED circuit is working fine.

 

The APU is working great. It needs a heatsink as it gets very hot.

 

Terry S. found that we need to rework the Z80 V4 board with a simple fix to avoid double clocking the USB VDIP1 module. Same fix needs to be apply to the new H17/H37/H67 controllers. The fix improves the reliability of such boards when pushing them to 16MHz by eliminating such double clocking. More information on such reworks will be provided.

 

I want to thank Terry S. as he was the main person behind the SSI board. He provided block diagrams, timing measurements, files, etc., to create such great board. I want to thank him for all his support during the testing/debugging of such board. I know he is now anxious to start working on the HA-8-3 clone using his wireless joystick to play games on the big monitor. I hope Les can get me Pacman working on the HA-8-3 clone using the big screen with sound and the joystick. 😊

 

This is my first time booting the Z67-IDE+ at 16MHz with the Z80 on-board memory. Very fast and stable. Thanks Terry S. for such SSI board. Also this setup allows me to test the new H8 backplane at 16MHz to verify it’s reliability at such speeds.

 

 

 

 

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