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.