Apple IIe seriALL card by Practical Peripherals info needed + adtpro help

I've not seen one before, so I can't advise there.
Unless it's got the same I/O addresses and behaviors as a Super Serial card, it's not likely to work. You might try setting the ADTPro client to "LASER MODEM" which will try to poke at slot 2 using higher-level Pascal entry points. It will limit you to 19200 baud if it works.

David, thanks for your reply
Would it help you if I took a picture of said serial card?

i'll do that tonight

Just give the numbers off the big chips - it would be interesting if it was a typical ACIA or something else. But really you just need to try it out. Put it in slot 2 and see if it'll communicate like a SSC; if not, try the Laser setting; if not, then you've got to keep looking for documentation.

no picture yet cos murphy took my main system down today.

there's 2 big chips on it:
- one marked "8337" and "SY6551"
- another with a see-thru windows in it: TMS 2764JL -45 "MEP8414"

does that say anything?
oh there's also 2 switch blocks with 8 switches each, configured like this:
S1: 10100000
S2: 00011111

and a 5 position jumper block labeled HHS with a jumper on position 5

Ok, that's an ACIA UART:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology_6551
so we know it has the basic I/O characteristics of a SSC. We just don't know where it maps the I/O registers in memory. You just have to try it - or find someone who knows for sure. ADT and ADTPro both talk to the hardware at a very low level, so they need to know some details about the hardware implementation. The exception is the Laser support I mentioned earler - that's one level up, but only works for a limited number of devices.

Edit: with that extra HHS clue, Google dug this up (zoom all the way to the bottom) :
http://apple2.org.za/gswv/a2zine/GS.WorldView/v1999/Oct/Modem.Mgr.Manual/MMGR.CHAP.11.txt

There's just not a ton of info out there that's easy to find...

thank you for your effort!

however no good news yet.. CTRL-A nor CTRL-I does anything

you said:
"Unless it's got the same I/O addresses and behaviors as a Super Serial card, it's not likely to work. You might try setting the ADTPro client to "LASER MODEM"

I'm out of luck at the moment to try that.. No nullmodem cable and to broke atm to buy one.

I've seen http://practicalperipheralshistory.com/ , i'll try contacting the owner of that product. And meanwhile save up for a super serial card!

-double post sorry-

If you dump the ROM I may be able to help. Try this:

]CALL-151
*C200.C27F
*C280.C2FF

record the 16 lines each of the above two commands generate.

If the ROM is bigger than 256 bytes then the rest can be obtained like this:

*CFFF
*C200

ignore output from the above two commands - they just disable all cards that use the expansion ROM space and then enable the card in slot 2 access to the expansion ROM.

*C800.C87F
*C880.C8FF

repeat these with C9, CA, CB, CC, CD and CE replacing the C8.

Alternatively, use the monitor L command to disassemble the ROM code yourself:

*C200L
*L
*L

etc

If you see JSR $C8xx then you know that the card has an expansion ROM and you can disassemble that. Once the instruction flow can be determined the location of the 6551 can be determined. There are really only 4 likely locations:

$C0A0..3
$C0A4..7
$C0A8..B
$C0CC..F

The Super Serial Card and the IIc use the third option:

C0A8 = Tx/Rx register
C0A9 = status register
C0AA = command register
C0AB = control register

thx for your reply Apple2e.

Meanwhile I have been emailing with Michael Seedman, one of the original engineers at Practical Pheripherals.
He doesn't remember all the details, but he could tell me this:
"I remember it being a 6551 UART, and clearly it was memory mapped like the SSC into the 256 Byte page."

He also attached a folder of the SeriALL with the specs.
I can post it online, or email it to one of the Apple II archive websites if anyone can recommend.

There's a lot of info in the spec list, and it clearly says: "Apple Super Serial Card hardware/software compatible in communications mode"
I will upload it tonight, there's more useful info on it. Not at home atm.

Well, that answers your original question, doesn't it? :-) As long as you can get it into this "communications mode" you should be ready to go.

hmm yeah but i'm still wondering what the jumpers and switches are for.
and it doesn't seem to behave normally when using ADTPro.

here, i uploaded the original folder, (edit: hosted on imgur now)
http://imgur.com/X7Lho.jpg
http://imgur.com/9oIxX.jpg

havent had time to try above procedures though.

He misremembers this. An Apple II card (in slots 1-7) has access to three memory areas:

16 bytes (C0m0..C0mF) typically used for I/O devices
256 bytes (Cn00..CnFF) typically used for ROM
2047 bytes (C800..CFFE) typically used for expansion ROM

The SSC uses the 16 byte area to memory map the 6551 not the 256 byte one. The picture shows a 2764 (8KByte) EPROM. Either the card has some clever bank selection logic or at least one of the switches (or jumpers) is used to partition the ROM into two (or more banks) - communications mode vs printer mode for example. Other switches/jumpers would choose the type of printer attached.

Certainly sounds like a versatile card.

*BUMP*

A year has past and I've had no time at all for this. Finally I'm back to getting this sorted.

Here's the current status:
- I'm guessing the switches correspond exactly to the SSC, with difference that it has 8 positions per switch instead of 7. I read somewhere that I should just ignore the 8th position switch. So I set it to the prefered setting for ADTPro

- The 5 position jumper block labeled HSS I don't have a clue yet what options it offers (besides. I'm guessing again that one of these positions should be communications mode. Position 5 enables 'carrier control' according to the link posted by David.

- I'm unsuccessful in CTRL-A or CTRL-I .. could this be related to the jumper setting?
Or am I missing something silly?

- I dumped the ROM following Apple2e's procedure and took some screens. Not sure how to interpret all this though. If I get it right it does have expansion rom. There was some "blank space" in between though. By pressing L I went all the way from 0000 to FFFF. My hand hurts now

Time for sleep now.

Would love to have you contribute it to www.Apple2Online.com. We're trying to increase our collection of all-things-Apple II as much as possible, and hard-to-find manuals, spec sheets, etc. are most welcomed!

Ken
http://www.Apple2Online.com

Try Here....

http://www.1000bit.net/main.asp

Complete URL:
http://www.1000bit.it/support/manuali/download.asp?id=535