[Coco] An X-10 usage for the Direct Connect Modem Pak

[George Ramsower]

  Kevin,
  The DC Modem pak does not have those connections outside the pak. It 
requires opening the pak and soldering wires to the 6551 inside to 
access the DTR and RTS pins on that chip. So it DOES require a small 
modification. Then those wires need to be wired to an outside DB9 or a 
DB25 on the correct pins of each. The DC Modem Pak only has an RJ11 
female connector on the outside of the program pak.
  How did you do you do this without modification to the program pak?
   I'm dying to know.
George R.


On 8/17/2015 5:40 PM, K. Pruitt wrote:
> The Direct Connect Modem Pak #26-2228, without modification, works as 
> a host for the CM17A "firecracker" RF transceiver .
>
> I used the cable from a CM11A controller module which has a phone line 
> connector on one end and a DB-9 female port on the other end to hook 
> it via a male-to-male adapter to the CM17A module which also has a 
> DB-9 female port.
>
> The program I use to access the CM17A via the RS-232 Pak bit-bangs the 
> DTR and RTS bits of the command register. The DC Modem Pak works the 
> same way, just with a different address for the 6551, but it is still 
> the DTR and RTS bit of the command register that gets hit. The same 
> patterns to produce the logic codes with the RS-232 Pak apply to the 
> DC Modem Pak. Baud rate is irrelevant to this application so the 300 
> baud limitation of the DC Modem Pak doesn't have any negative impact 
> here.
>
> All in all not a bad use for the Direct Connect Modem Pak considering 
> there is no hardware modification needed and it adds RF control of X10 
> modules to the CoCo.
>
> I haven't done any reliability checking yet. This is just my report on 
> my "what if I plug this thing here in to this thing here" experiment.
>
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