Re: A multiport serial board would be nice...

[dempson@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

In article <365lak$2f6@zircon.cs.uow.edu.au>,
David E A Wilson <david@zircon.cs.uow.edu.au> wrote:
> david@zircon.cs.uow.edu.au (David E A Wilson) writes:
> >4)	Should the card have any firmware? The Basic & Advanced (Pascal 1.1)
> >	firmware interfaces really only support one port.
> 
> It occurred to me a few hours after posting this that I could write
> the first character device SmartPort implementation. This would allow
> all N ports to be used and would make the card identifiable in a slot
> scan.

Wow!  Unfortunately, no existing software would recognise it.  I
suppose ProTerm can have a custom driver written.  How about BBS
software drivers?  For that matter, is there any multi-user BBS
software for the Apple II?

One other point to consider: the SmartPort and Pascal 1.1 firmware ID
bytes conflict, so you couldn't have the card support both SmartPort
and Pascal (unless you did two ROMs).

> For the //gs I would need someone to write a driver (which
> would probably bypass the onboard firmware completely) as I do not
> have any info on GS/OS & writing drivers for it.

I don't know how well GS/OS supports generated drivers for SmartPort
character devices.  The device driver reference implies that they are
supported.

I could help with writing a loaded GS/OS drive for any card (also GNO
drivers).
-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz
Snail mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand