Re: Hardware musings

["David Wilson" <mcs6502@gmail.com>]

Justin England wrote:
> A light technical overview of the project:  I did a quick scan in the last
> couple of days of the AppleTalk ROM listings in my //c Tech Ref book.  It
> appears at first glance that Apple set up the AT code in the //c to simply
> look like a smart port device.  Therefore, I would have to assume that
> ProDOS would have seen it as nothing more than another smartport.

I don't think you looked closely enough.

The C7XX space in the 3.5ROM does NOT implement a SmartPort interface -
rather a Pascal 1.1 character interface with all the offsets pointing
to an error routine. The Appletalk entry point is hardcoded at Cn12 and
is called with YX=address of parameter list and A=$Cn where n=slot
number.

The Workstation card for the Apple IIe also looks like a Pascal 1.1
device so that it can be used as a printer card (I think to either to a
local printer or possibly to a network printer).

> Since the
> //c already has a smartport, why couldn't a device be built that connected
> to the smartport and talk to an AppleTalk network (via localtalk or even
> ethernet.)

Existing software for the IIe and IIgs does not know about a Smartport
connected AppleTalk interface - much better to make it look and act
like a Workstation card.