Thread View: net.micro.atari
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Started by O.ALEXANDER
Tue, 08 May 1984 18:11
Serial bus to RS232 device | OSS SuperBasic
Author: O.ALEXANDER
Date: Tue, 08 May 1984 18:11
Date: Tue, 08 May 1984 18:11
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[] In the June issue of Analog Computing, there is a brief mention of a Serial Bus Modem Adapter from Advanced Interface Devices, that can be used to connect most modems and RS-232 devices to the Atari over it's serial bus without an 850 interface module. This was in the new products section and had an accompanying picture showing what looked like a cable, a manual, and software on floppy. The Question: has anyone had any experience with this device and (as usual) what was their experience with it. It comes with software, but is this just a device driver, or must a special program be used to utilize the device (ie. for different baud rates and other configurations). Also in that issue was a brief review of OSS SuperBasic cartidge. OSS Super cartidges uses bank switching within the cartidge (multiple ROMs software selected and mapped to overlapping address spaces) to allow, for example, a 12K ROM that uses 8K of address space. Any way the article said that the cartidge was upward compatable with Atari Basic, and SIGNIFICANTLY faster. The Question: has anyone had any experience with this device and (again) what was their experience with it. Also does anyone have execution speed comparisons. Replies can be sent to me or posted if deemed news worthy.! I will summarize and post [assuming I get replies. This news group has been kind of dead, but that's another article]. Owen Alexander houxl!oaa
Re: Serial bus to RS232 device
Author: Ron Hitchens
Date: Fri, 11 May 1984 17:48
Date: Fri, 11 May 1984 17:48
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[squish]
I just took a look at the item in the June Analog (mentioned in the orig
article), it's obviously just an Atrai serial bus connector to DB25 cable.
What that means is that any device it is connected to is plugged directly into
the bus. Not a good thing if you want to access a different device (like a
disk drive). An intelligent, non-Atari, device (like a Hayes modem) could
cause severe problems for the "standard" Atari devices.
It also means that special access techniques thru SIO are neccessary in
order to change the POKEY clock rate on the serial bus. I'm sure that's what
the software on the included disk is for, but a little more is involved than
the average CIO device driver. Anything which uses standard R: access will
probably work OK (as long as it doesn't access any other serial bus device),
but something making direct calls to SIO may be in trouble. Using it for
connecting a printer may not work because the printer would think everything
coming across the bus was for it. Unless their driver is very sophisticated
mixing accesses to other devices my not be possible. Hard to say.
I think it's a good idea, I even considered rigging one up myself, but it
can't be considered a direct replacement for the 850. Be sure to test it out
before buying.
All of this is pure conjecture, based solely on my knowledge of Atari
hardware and software. Hope it's been of some help.
Ron Hitchens hitchens@ut-sally.UUCP
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[what's the current release date for Atari Unix?]
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