[Coco] DriveWire serial multiplexing

[Bill Pierce]

Allen,
The spec to DriveWire is linked on Aaron's DriveWire 4 website in the "Documentation" link.

https://sites.google.com/site/drivewire4/

Some of it is a little out of date and you will have to consult Aaron on this, but the protocol in it's rawest form is pretty much explained in the spec docs. I have been developing some utilities for DriveWire and in reading the spec, I was amazed at the capabilities that are just hinted at and even more so in what it actually does. Basically, it's gives the Coco your PC's "brain" and makes it digestible to the Coco. There's some pretty deep stuff there.

The Boisy/Becker port in it's basic form, is just a set of addresses used for external communication to external devices or communications systems. I've never seen the hardware implementation but the implementation used in the emulators is used for the emulator to communicate to the host system just as the serial port on the Coco but using raw full byte form at very high speeds. It's used on an old SDLMess build that seems to have disappeared, an unreleased, patched version of Vcc, and Ciaran recently implemented the port into the XRoar Coco 2 emulation. It allows the emulators to use drivewire and all it's functions and virtual drives. I'm sure there are many other things it's capable of and there will probably be better answers and corrections to my description but I'm just stating in what form I use it. I think it was originally used on Gary's FPGA project to interface with the PC as to have some control of the original headless unit. On this I'm just guessing and I know I will be corrected.
As I described in an earlier post, I use it to interface multiple emulators to instances of drivewire and at this point, I wouldn't run the emulators without it. I'd be lost.

I know I will be corrected as I've found that those on this list enjoy correcting someone else's wrong answer in detail instead of answering the original question. So there guys... have at me :-P

Bill Pierce
My Music from the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer 2 & 3
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-----Original Message-----
From: Allen Huffman <alsplace at pobox.com>
To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Thu, Mar 28, 2013 10:00 am
Subject: [Coco] DriveWire serial multiplexing


If I recall, there are now DriveWire OS-9 drivers for virtual serial ports, that 
all communicate across the DW link. I am needing to multiplex a few serial 
streams across one port, and wanted to look in to how DW does it and see if I 
could do it in a compatible way.

>From Googling, I have found a FAQ that seems outdated, since I  found another 
specification document listing faster baud rates achievable on the CoCo 1/2 
using DW... And I found various other pages with project files and such, but I 
am not really sure where to go to find the spec. I just read through one (wow, 
lots of stuff in there I didn't know about) but it didn't talk about virtual 
serial streams.

Anyone care to teach me to fish and point me in the correct direction?

And what is a "becker port"? I keep seeing it referenced. CoCoFPGA related, I 
gather?
-
Allen Huffman - PO Box 22031 - Clive IA 50325 - 515-999-0227 (vmail/TXT only)
Sent from my iPad.

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