[Coco] drivewire suggestions

[Steven Hirsch]

On Fri, 16 Jul 2010, Willard Goosey wrote:

> On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 07:51:48AM -0400, Steven Hirsch wrote:
>>
>> Atari 8-bit machines have SIO2PC.  There is less motivation to develop a
>> new scheme for Apple II, since Appletalk client capability is built in to
>> the IIGS and available for older models through a peripheral card.
>
> I figured the Atari 8-bit machines would have something, since they
> all hooked up external floppies via a serial port, and I knew the IIGS
> had Appletalk.  I didn't know there was a localtalk card for the other
> Apple IIs, though.  That's pretty cool!

Yes, it's really terrific.  I was responsible for adding support for 
so-called "short name" AFP (Apple Filing Protocol) to the open source 
netatalk package.  That let's you provide file services from any Linux 
box.  I can net-boot my IIe and IIGS directly from my server.

>> But, for machines like the //c it would be great to have DW support.  That
>> machine has no bus slots or expansion connector.
>
> Does it have an RS-232 port?  Or at least some sort of semi-standard
> I/O port?  I'm not familiar with the Apple IIs.  Is the OS hackable
> enough to add a DW client to?

The IIc has RS232 and game ports.  I strongly suspect that bit-banging the 
game port will be faster than the built-in UART.  I might take a look at 
the CoCo bit-banger code to see if it can be ported to 6502 assembler.

Support for booting an Apple 2 from DW would require an add-on card with 
ROM, but writing a loadable file system driver for ProDOS (8-bit) or GS/OS 
(16-bit) shouldn't be too difficult.

Steve


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