Re: Super Serial Card Question?

["mdj" <mdj.mdj@gmail.com>]

Michael J. Mahon wrote:

> If you drop a $10 into the 6551 speed register, it runs at 115kbps.
> Apparently, this is not well known, since someone sells a "turbo"
> option daughterboard to achieve this speed, too.

Interesting. That's actually plenty of speed to deliver virtual disk
devices, as it's theoretically  faster than a disk ][ at that speed.
Wonder if anyone would be interested in such a driver for ProDOS...

I use the Workstation card myself, as I've mentioned, which gives both
Appletalk compatibility and a 'fast' serial port as it uses the ACIA's
of the IIgs/macintosh rather than the 6551. Unfortunately this breaks
compatibility with any software that doesn't use the Apple firmware
interface, which also unfortunately, is most useful comms software :-(

Apple seemed to go through a period of shoddy I/O firmware. The Super
Serial was a shocker in this regard, and the original IIe 80-column
firmware was also pretty awful.

I'm surprised by the number of mentions of unenhanced IIe's on this
list. I haven't even seen one since about 1986! I guess a number of
people just used IIe's as replacement II+'s and never wanted for more.

Matt