Hello all,
I am trying to obtain a serial card for my Apple IIe (I just got it, and I have 2 80col text cards, one 80col with 64k ram, a z80 card, a printer card (parallel, not serial as far as I can tell), two Disk II drives, an Apple Monitor /// and a VersaWriter (which I cannot find software for)). I have been doing lots of research (googling) for open source PCBs that are equivalent to the super serial card (best I found was https://github.com/jmthompson/ssc, but it requires programming a GAL so I am not sure about how easy that would be). I also saw some info on using a Raspberry PI (http://ivanx.com/rasppleii/ and https://github.com/dschmenk/apple2pi) yet those seem to also require either an adapter card that I cannot find schematics for or a Super Serial Card. The Uthernet card also seemed interesting...
What I am wondering is what my best bet is for getting a Super Serial Card equivalent (I don't mind waiting for PCB fab or soldering small SMD parts, I just want to avoid shipping costs from US to Canada). I have already started designing a PCB by copying from the schematic in the Super Serial Card manual. Why are is there so little open source hardware for this?
Thanks.
You can sometimes find serial cards and other cards on ebay.
I only started programming them a few weeks ago, but if you have the bog standard TL866ii+ (Or better yet, the T56) EEPROM programmers, they're as simple as "stick them in, choose the programme, press write".
Hope that helps!
Chesh
Your best bet is just to buy a used Super Serial Card from eBay. Cost of shipping to Canada has got to be cheaper than trying to source all the parts to make a clone and having them shipped, designing a PCB and getting it fabbed and shipped, etc.
What are you looking to connect to serially? If it is something slow like a printer then a 6850 based card like the Apple Communications Card or one of the clones of it are usually cheaper than a Super Serial Card.
I have already investigated the costs of both, having the PCB fabbed and buy all the parts and having them shipped is still cheaper that buying one on ebay (shipping from US to Canada is around USD30). Also, designing and putting together a PCB is more interesting...
I want to use it to connect to a computer for ADTPro, I also want to try using it as a terminal for linux following https://web.archive.org/web/20100817014158/http:/dataswamp.net/apple2eserialterm/index.php
Oh thanks for the info, I guess I should get one of those, unless I can use something like https://github.com/TomNisbet/TommyPROM or https://github.com/ole00/afterburner.
The T56 covers a lot more retro chips as it has a higer write voltage. If my TL866 ii+ ever dies I'll be upgrading :-)
Chesh
I have the older TL966CS, in this case the newer version was apparently not an upgrade because the version I have can burn a lot of 2716 variants that people report as failures on the TL866-II or TL-866-II+.