What can you guys tell me about these Apple /// 820-0071-D (670-0129) Serial Cards? I have 3 of them and they puzzle me, especially with that giant pushbutton. I cant find any documentation about them. Are they identical to the RS-232 port on the main board but a secondary device? Need info please!
The link below talks a little about the card. At the bottom is mentions the button. Apparently the button makes it act like a modem eliminator cable is being used? I suspect that changes the pinout at the port to turn a regular cable into a null modem cable perhaps? I'm not sure though.
https://www.apple3.org/Documents/Technotes/TA27977.html
Indeed the layout shows all signals from the RS232 connector are routed to the switch - so the switch is obviously there to switch the pin mapping of all signals. Neat. So you only needed one type of cable - and could use it to connect to a modem (a DCE device) - or to another computer (a DTE device). Instead of using separate crossed (Null-modem) cables or non-crossed cables, you simply switched the card... I've never seen an RS232 card with such a feature...
The electronic looks the same like the onboard Rs232 (same controller). So, I guess it's likely software compatible - except for a different (base) address.
Do we have a list of the base addresses (board and card) I can reach out to the ADTPro forum and see if they can tweak the SOS adt client to add support for the card since apple /// support is limited.
The serial interface is described in the Apple III Device Driver Writer's Guide. The controller of the onboard serial interface is mapped to C0F0 (C0F0-C0F3). I/O slot #1 uses base address C080, slot #2 C090, slot #3 C0A0 etc. I guess the controller of the serial card is simply mapped to the slot's I/O space.
If you know what you're doing, you could probably patch the ADTpro binary yourself, replacing the C0F0 address with C090 (for slot #2, as an example).
I wish, I am more of a hardware guy. If anyone here knows how to do this I can do all the testing they require.