[Coco] coco serial port

[Gene Heskett]

On Wednesday 07 November 2012 20:29:28 Douglas Bell did opine:

> I was visiting with a friend today about the coco and was bringing him
> up to date on all the enchantments that have been developed over the
> years.
> 
> One thing led to another and then he told me about a hardware mod the
> made to allow the coco to have a real serial port. Since I'm fairly new
> on the seen.
> 
> Sense the 1980's .   I'm not aware of any mods to the serial port. So im
> throwing this out for input,  to see if anyone is interested in this
> coming to light again
> 
> He did tell me it was for a OS9 system. He is not a member of this news
> letter yet but he told me to send the link to him. So he will be on the
> scene soon.
> 
> Any response will be forwarded to him till he joins.
> 
There was a conversion kit that could be fairly easily applied to a 
coco/coco2 way back when.  I put one of them into a coco2 and used it for 
about 14 years talking to a Grass Valley Group 300-3a/b production 
television switcher at WDTV-tv.  For what I asked it to do, it Just 
Worked(TM).  And did the main job 4x faster than Grasses own $20,000 kit 
accessory, and gave the tech directors file names instead of code numbers 
the $20k kit gave.

The article is in The Rainbow, search the archive index for "The Forgotten 
Chip" article.

AFAIK, no one ever actually made a commercial kit and sold it based on that 
(someone should have), but it sure was just what the Dr. ordered for me as 
it allowed me to write troubleshooting routines in Basic09 that could reach 
into that complex beast and exercise the troublesome portion of the circuit 
until I could determine the exact chip I needed to replace.  It took time 
to write that software of course, but in the overall scheme of things it 
sped me up quite a bit. 

> Douglas Bell
> 
> www.papermoneyworld.net


Cheers Douglas, Gene
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
My web page: <http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene> is up!
You will pay for your sins.  If you have already paid, please disregard
this message.