Re: AE PC Transporter Questions...

[a_specto@alcor.concordia.ca (Mitchell Spector)]

dempson@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson) wrote:

>Willie Yeo <willie@singapore.com> wrote:
>
>> In article <3D2B7B9C.F3129EF5@usa.net>, a2forever@usa.net wrote:
>> 
>> > What exactly is it, an AT (80286) or XT (8088) emulator?
>> 
>>    It is an XT 8088 emulator, utilising the accelerated NEC 8088 processor.
>
>It is an NEC V30 running at about 7 MHz.

    It ran just slightly above, 7.16 MHz to be precise to the dot.

>You exit from the PC Transporter either via its control panel (accessed
>by holding down the shift key and pressing Caps Lock twice, if I
>remember right) or with recent enough PC Transporter software there is
>an MS-DOS program called BYE.COM included (or it might have been called
>something else and I renamed it to BYE for consistency).

    It is called "PCTQUIT.COM" though it was suggested that you might 
want to rename it just that--'bye' or 'quit'. I think I may even have named
my copy "LO.COM" simply because I was so used to using that command
to logoff my old VMS shell account way back then. :)

>> > Do I need an IBM 5.25 inch disk drive/keyboard/monitor/etc attached to
>> > use it?
>> 
>>    You need the PC-Transdrive if you want to access 5.25" PC formatted
>> floppies (360k), or a SuperDrive if you want to access the 3.5" PC
>> formatted floppies.
>
>I would not recommend trying to connect a SuperDrive to a PC
>Transporter.  The PCT doesn't support high density disks anyway (it can
>access them if you have a SuperDrive connected to a SuperDrive
>controller, and map that as the A: drive).

    I'm not sure if you implied it above, but when mapping a SuperDrive with
controller card to drive 'A:' in the PCT Control Panel, it actually was able
to read, write and format 1.44mb MS-DOS disks. I often used it as it means
to transfer data back and forth between my real PC and PCT-equipped IIgs.
Reliably too I might add.

    I do vaguely remember that it wasn't officially supported (or intended at
the time) by AE but worked fine nonetheless. At times I would get a garbled
directory listing from 1.44mb disks in MS-DOS mode, but launching the PCT
software from ProDOS-8 rather than GS/OS often cleared it up.

>Applied Engineering had both 5.25" and 3.5" TransDrives available, and
>you can also connect an Apple 3.5 Drive, which will support 720K
>floppies (not 100% reliably) while the PC Transporter is acting as a PC,
>but only 800K (and possibly 400K) while the PC Transporter is acting as
>a disk controller for the Apple II.
>
>The TransDrives are standard PC floppy drives with a specially modified
>interface.  You cannot connect a standard PC floppy drive directly to
>the PC Transporter.

    An interesting fact: Not only could you use the TransDrive 3.5 and 5.25
as ProDOS devices when running in Apple mode, but they could be used
in conjunction with the MSDOS.FST to view (and move) files from 360K
and 720K MS-DOS floppies. It wasn't of much use however since the
drives were polled so often (and slowly) that it made GS/OS unusable.

    I can remember either removing my TransDrive 5.25 or restoring the
previously patched ProDOS boot stub to -NOT- recognize PCT devices.
Probably the former since I liked having the 768K RAMDisk it offered
in Apple mode (utilitizing the PCT's on-board memory).

>You can connect a genuine PC keyboard to the PC Transporter, if you have
>the right adaptor cable (DIN-5 to molex).  It is usually more convenient
>(for reasons of space) to use the Apple II keyboard, as long as you are
>running on a IIgs and have an extended keyboard.  A real PC keyboard
>might be more attractive when using the PCT on a IIe, and it is almost a
>requirement when using the PCT on a II+.

    The PCT's on board video controller could also independently operate
a CGA/TTL monitor with a DE-9 to molex adapter cable. Most IIgs users
used the ColorSwitch daughterboard (digital to analog) to use the 
AppleColor RGB monitor in both Apple and IBM modes.

    A bit of trivia: you can run Windows 3.0 on a PCT in an extremely,
extremely limited sense (in Real Mode and CGA). Before my partition
with the PCT hardisk images crashed, I had it set up to boot into
MS-DOS 6.22 and use Dosshell (with mouse support) as a graphical
interface. That was at least usable.

Incidentally, there's a PDF version of the PCT manual that can be
downloaded from here:

http://homepage.mac.com/waynes/.cv/waynes/Public/manuals
/pc_transporter_1.31.pdf-link.pdf

Mitchell Spector
a_specto@alcor.concordia.ca