[Coco] Detecting when CoCo is turned OFF

[Allen Huffman]

On May 7, 2021, at 3:23 PM, Salvador Garcia via Coco <coco at maltedmedia.com> wrote:
> 
> Can you elaborate  on how I can do this using the converter? Or refer me to reading material? Much appreciated! Salvador

Hook it up to the Arduino so it can rad and write to the port, and set the baud rate to whatever the CoCo defaults too for the printer. CoCo can just do:

PRINT #-2,"MESSAGE"

The Arduino can read that like any other read operation. You could send a byte like CHR$(0) or an ASCII character or message to parse.

My SirSound project uses an Arduino hooked to the CoCo bitbanger that way, and my read me might give some details:

https://github.com/allenhuffman/SirSound

My Arduino code is in the Development branch there, but you can get good examples of serial routines from the Arduino.CC website. In my case, I wanted to act more like a printer so I used a neutered Serial driver that is input only, freeing up the TX pin to be used to signal the CoCo that the printer is ready or idle, for flow control.