Updating KEGS, have some questions

["Christopher G. Mason" <cgm1@my-deja.com>]

Hello all,

I have been hacking away at the last release of KEGS 0.91, namely the 
KEGS32 port that used to be hosted over at geocities. So far I have 
added full Uthernet support via WinPCap (using the latest tfe code from 
VICE), parallel card support, and virtual color printer support (Epson 
LQ based, from an unofficial CVS build of the DOSBOX project). Anyway I 
had a few questions.

1. For the parallel card emulation, I implemented a very basic interface 
in virtual Slot 1 utilizing the firmware from the Apple II Parallel 
Card. How do these cards work officially? Right now I am sending all 
data being written to $C090 to the virtual printer. It seems to work ok 
but I am noticing apps are writing the same data to other addresses (ex: 
$C092), is there any particular reason for this behavior? For printer 
status info, I am following AppleWin's approach and just returning 0xFF 
("Ready") anytime an app reads $C090-C09F. What is the "official" 
address used to query printer status, and what are the hex values for 
the various states? (ex: off line, out of paper, etc.)

2. I would like to implement ImageWriter II emulation, but I am running 
into issues with GS/OS. Its Imagewriter driver queries the printer using 
ESC-? to determine if there is a color ribbon installed and assumes B&W 
only printing if it receives no response. Even though it isn't possible 
in real life, I would like to route data via the parallel interface 
because it "prints" ALOT faster, KEGS' SCC emulation is timing accurate 
and 57600 baud is 57600 baud. The problem is parallel data transfer is 
one way and one can't return the query string the driver is looking for. 
Is there a patched driver around one can use to force color printing? 
Otherwise I will have to resort to using the emulated serial interface.

3. Does anyone have technical info for the Imagewriter LQ (escape codes, 
etc.)? It may be a viable emulation option for high res color GS/OS 
printing.

4. Is Harmonie available for sale anywhere? I would like to test its 
Epson LQ driver against the printer emulation. The freeware GS/OS driver 
I found is pretty buggy and black and white only. The good news is The 
Print Shop GS prints in full color. Kinda weird (and neat) seeing that 
stuff coming out of my color laser printer.

5. I would like to possibly add basic MIDI I/O to KEGS. Emulating an 
Apple MIDI adapter hooked up to a serial port would likely be the 
easiest way to do this, but I need to know how it works. Was it just a 
"dumb" box, just converting the RS-232 signals to MIDI friendly timing, 
or did it have any firmware? Otherwise another option might be emulating 
a Passport Designs MIDI card.

That should be it for now. Hopefully I will get a build up for download 
soon. It will be Win32 only for now as I don't have access to a Linux or 
OS X machine for building and testing.