Post by Pyrofer on May 19, 2017 12:15:44 GMT
Ok, So I got a 1581 and it wouldn't work. Turns out the wifi modem I had plugged in was shorting some userport pins to get 9600 and that broke burst mode loading on the 1581 (1571?).
So I had the choice of unplugging one or the other. As the first disk image I wrote to test the 1581 was DesTerm3.0, unplugging the modem didn't really help. So my solution was a swiftlink cart. Sadly these are uncommon, expensive and have a REAL RS232 port not a wifi modem.
So I have designed a PCB to go inside the 128. It's a riser card that fits under one of the CIA chips (6526) and has the 6551 UART and an ESP-01 module onboard. It requires a single jumper wire to the decoded address line (io1/2 on the cart port) and should then just appear as if it was a swiftlink cart to the 128.
However, it will have the WiFi modem onboard. Sadly that ESP has no hardware flow control so I had to loop those on the 6551 but I did pass DCD and DSR to the ESP via it's 2 spare GPIO, I plan to re-write the modem firmware to make use of these. It should in theory allow a BBS program to detect a disconnect by dropping DCD etc.
I did pass RTS/CTS to a header if a better than the ESP solution is found or for using a TTL to USB Serial cable instead of the ESP.
I have ordered PCBs and will update when they arrive and I can test it.
So I had the choice of unplugging one or the other. As the first disk image I wrote to test the 1581 was DesTerm3.0, unplugging the modem didn't really help. So my solution was a swiftlink cart. Sadly these are uncommon, expensive and have a REAL RS232 port not a wifi modem.
So I have designed a PCB to go inside the 128. It's a riser card that fits under one of the CIA chips (6526) and has the 6551 UART and an ESP-01 module onboard. It requires a single jumper wire to the decoded address line (io1/2 on the cart port) and should then just appear as if it was a swiftlink cart to the 128.
However, it will have the WiFi modem onboard. Sadly that ESP has no hardware flow control so I had to loop those on the 6551 but I did pass DCD and DSR to the ESP via it's 2 spare GPIO, I plan to re-write the modem firmware to make use of these. It should in theory allow a BBS program to detect a disconnect by dropping DCD etc.
I did pass RTS/CTS to a header if a better than the ESP solution is found or for using a TTL to USB Serial cable instead of the ESP.
I have ordered PCBs and will update when they arrive and I can test it.