[Coco] PBJ PC PAK - Part II - Interfacing (source for driver)

[Gene Heskett]

On Thursday 31 January 2008, Mark McDougall wrote:
>Gene Heskett wrote:
>> If one knows the hardware at the register level, it does seem like it
>> would be better done in assembly to me just because it is going to be less
>> wastefull of the coco's limited resources.
>
>Given the nature of what has to be achieved, I agree that sector-level I/O
>routines would be best done in assembler and writing them in C would offer
>little benefit in the way of reduced development time.
>
>If one then wishes to layer a filesystem over that, then I'd venture that C
>would be the way to go there.
>
>> I relate that not to blow my horn,
>
>Having your software run for 15 years and out-perform a $20K commercial
>offering in the process is pretty impressive from any standpoint. I
>certainly can't claim the same... _yet_, anyway... ;)

Well, having the commercial hardware built by the lowest bidder was GVG's 
first mistake.  Building in the capability to run the mixers interface at 
38.4kb and then running this peripheral at 1200 baud was the next mistake, 
and the final was in displaying the filenames as 2 hex letter codes.  Mine 
used a 5" video monitor on one of those little postage stamp thingies that 
skipped the modulator so we had english filenames being displayed was another 
huge advantage to the home court.  I wrote the program on wdtv's time & sold 
them the hardware at the time for $245.  Because the comm protocol allowed me 
too troll around in the mixers guts fairly easily, I often used variations to 
poke at this chip/path or that, and was several times able to pin down the 
exact chip that had failed using only the coco.  But it was getting on toward 
the far end of the bathtub curve at 20+ years old, and I was hacking often 
newer, far more capable parts into it near the end because the real parts 
were being treated as unobtainium and priced accordingly by GVG.  Knowing I 
was retiring, it got replaced with an all digital mixer about 6 months before 
I retired.  Of course the unspoken reason was that when I retired, they 
weren't going to be able to find anyone else that could fix it when it got a 
tummy ache.  Replacing it also reduced the HVAC requirements in the control 
room by 10 or 11 kw, another large reason to retire it after all those years.

>I know at least 1 hospital down under was still using an Apple II based
>system a few years ago, though I can't recall the application, nor do I know
>if it was a "commercial" solution or something rigged up by a local
> techie...

I once heard of a kalifornia hospital that ran their accounting on a coco 2 
running a program written in the Forth interpreter that was sold way back 
then.  With HIPAA the law of the land, those have been retired by now I'd 
think.

>Regards,

-- 
Cheers Mark, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
: But for some things, Perl just isn't the optimal choice.

(yet)   :-)
             -- Larry Wall in <199702221943.LAA20388 at wall.org>