[Coco] os9/drivewire driver: success!

[John W. Linville]

On Mon, Nov 09, 2009 at 07:43:18AM -0500, Steven Hirsch wrote:
> On Sun, 8 Nov 2009, Aaron Wolfe wrote:
>
>> Here is an example of things working now (note process 3, this is the
>> shell on T2, which is using stdin/stout on my linux box, and where I'm
>> typing the commands). For now I've modified the drivewire server to
>> have no display, and just put stdin into the virtual serial port's
>> read buffer, write bytes from the virtual serial port to stdout.

> Terrific work.  I really look forward to being able to use a Linux box as 
> a console on the CoCo.  In the past year I've learned to love almost  
> everything about the little boxes - with the exception of the keyboard.  
> I simply cannot deal with it.  Hurts my fingers to type on it and I'm 
> very inaccurate due to the layout being a bit "off" from contemporary  
> standards.

Ditto.  I've had this type of thing penciled-in for a while, but never
needed it bad enough to do it -- now I won't have to, wooohoo! :-)

FWIW, I think you should have the driverwire server allocate a PTY.
Then, pass data back and forth betwen the coco and the PTY so that any
normal Linux tool that can access a TTY (e.g. minicom) can now talk
to the CoCo.  I use this sort of technique with some hacks I have
for MESS and MAME that I use quite often.  If you are interested,
I'd be happy to answer questions, share code, or otherwise cooperate
with you to do that part.

The above would be a good intermediate step that would enable you
(and others) to get some use out of /T2 while you continue to develop
your custom CoCo terminal client or internet modem (which may already
be implemented elsewhere), etc.

John
-- 
John W. Linville		Someday the world will need a hero, and you
linville at tuxdriver.com			might be all we have.  Be ready.