Re: Super Serial Support in Emulator (How to use it???)

[rdoerr@bizserve.com (Robert L. Doerr)]

> >I'm not sure how it looks for the SuperSerial board.  Was there a
> >common function call to the OS to identify it or did it have to check
> >memory for a signature?  When the program boots it looks for a
> >SuperSerial card in the configured slot.  If it donesn't find it it
> >will respond that it can't find a SuperSerial card in slot #x.  There
> >is a FORTH command to change the slot it uses:
> >
> >Configure SuperSerial in slot #4:
> >
> >4 SETUP-SERIAL-SLOT
> >SAVE-FORTH
> >
> >Configure SuperSerial in slot #2:
> >
> >2 SETUP-SERIAL-SLOT
> >SAVE-FORTH
> 
> It seems that this is a Forth disk, not a DOS 3.3 or ProDOS disk.
> 
> In order to understand what is going on, you will have to learn some
> Forth.  A good starting place would be to learn how to list "pages"
> and then list the page containing SETUP-SERIAL-SLOT.  That will
> almost certainly point you to the code that manipulates the SSC.

Hello Michael,

I finally found a command (VLIST) that shows all the definitions
within the vocabulary.  I haven't found a way to display the contents
of each one though.  One command I read about was (SEE) but that is
not supported with this version.

> Studying that code will tell you what needs to be done to wiggle
> the wires of the serial port to control the IR pod.
> 
> Or, it may show you that very little special magic is involved, and
> it can be easily worked around.
> 
> The biggest obstacle will be getting familiar with Forth, since
> virtually all the code is going to be in Forth.
> 
> The good news is that Google will find you lots of places to
> start your exploration.  ;-)

I really like this approach.  It should either show that a small
change in an existing emulator will allow this to work unaltered
or may show that if a few of the Serial routines in Forth are
redefined they might work with the current emulators.  The trick
is to figure out what the existing ones are trying to do.

Any Apple Forth experts out there in the group?????

Best Regards,

Robert