[Coco] drivewire suggestions

[Steven Hirsch]

On Sat, 17 Jul 2010, Willard Goosey wrote:

> On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 10:35:44PM -0400, Steven Hirsch wrote:
>> 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.
>
> That's pretty cool.  I've never done classic Mac network setup, though
> I have used Macs being served by netatalk.  If I can ever get an
> ethernet card for my Performa, I'll be jumping in with both feet.

Are you sure your Performa doesn't have ethernet built-in?  On some of the 
earlier models they had a "mini AUI" connector on the rear panel.  A 
number of companies made adapters to convert this to RJ45.  You also have 
the alternative of a localtalk<-->ethernet bridge, which is what you'd 
need anyway for a IIGS or IIe w/ workstation card (there was an Apple 2 
ethernet card, but it's rarer than hen's teeth).  Macs (and the IIGS) used 
a Zilog SCC serial chip and spoke localtalk from the printer and/or modem 
ports.

BTW, the "short name" support I added was specifically for Apple 2 ProDOS 
and GS/OS. Netatalk supported MacOS from the start - that's why it was 
written.

>> 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.
>
> My, that's a pretty flexible joystick port!
>>
>> 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.
>
> Well, the IIC does have a built-in floppy drive, so that should be good
> enough, as long as you have a boot disk and the drive works!
>
> The only other issue with DW supporting the Apple II series is the
> virtual disk images.  Is there any special weirdness in AppleII
> virtual disks, or are they just sector dumps?

There are many flavors of Apple disk images.  Most are sector dumps.  The 
low-level nibble dumps were for copy-protected games and were not common 
anyway.

Steve


--