On Tue, 9 Jun 2009, Michael J. Mahon wrote:
calibrator@freenet.de wrote:On 9 Jun., 22:39, ]3ob <bob [ @ ] onemanband.com> wrote:On 2009-06-09 15:14:13 -0400, "Michael J. Mahon" <mjma...@aol.com> said:Because of the potting, I'd bet it's a "dongle" required to allow a relatively expensive application program to run.Is it possible for a serial card (dual port or not) to require a dongle? What would it need one for, it's just a serial card. Uber baud rates?The dongle is not for the serial card but the (expensive) software license. I can imagine that it is some exotic data acquisition software, perhaps something with an external measuring instrument. However, I find it unusual to bundle such an expensive software with an exotic serial card *and* a hardware dongle. Another possibility would be some kind of processing card. As the card isn't very large I can only come up with some kind of number cruncher without its own memory.I think it's just a dual synchronous serial card--perhaps to operate a numerically controlled sign cutter or milling machine. For such an application, the cost of the serial card and the dongle would be negligible.
But if it's just a serial port, why not use the 6850 or 6551 which was intended for the 6502 bus? On the other hand, if they used the 8530, that would limit who could use the software, since it wouldn't be common, hence much less need for a dongle. POtting might be there because it's a module bought from some other company. That's a variant on someone else's reply that the potting is there to hide what's in there, so nobody can copy the hardware. Michael
Many Apple II's were sold as a component of a turnkey application like this. -michael ******** Note new website URL ******** NadaNet and AppleCrate II for Apple II parallel computing! Home page: http://home.comcast.net/~mjmahon/ "The wastebasket is our most important design tool--and it's seriously underused."