[Coco] CoCo Serial to Ethernet Interface/Converter

[Patrick Ulland]

What Don said.

The only literal ‘CoCo to ethernet’ interface being made now(ish) is 
Computer Conect’s CoCoIO, based on the WizNet 5100 chip. It does the 
mechanics - SYNs and ACKs and keepalives… while the CoCo chugs along 
processing the data stream. And guess what? It’s mainly useful talking 
to another CoCo or Apple Uthernet. No SSL makes us outcasts except for 
the odd web server.

Most current hardware projects are ‘CoCo to Pi’ or some other SBC. If 
FijiNet doesn’t already print, it could do this. But that’s more of a 
Linux project...

-rick


>
> However, while this solves the communication problem, it turns out you 
> can't just dump ascii to the printer like you could 40 years ago and 
> get it to print. High end printers can accept postscript or pcl and 
> low end printers expect some kind of specialized raster, usually kinda 
> looking like a TIFF file with some additional headers. So one has to 
> write a driver for their printer to use it. One can use open source 
> linux drivers as a guide, but some printers (like my Brother printer) 
> are proprietary and only distribute binary drivers. So its hard to use 
> on a CoCo.
>
> This would be the same problem for a network attached printer. You can 
> probably talk to one fine with a CoCoIO card or similar and just tcp 
> connect to port 9100 or 515. But you'd still need to pass it something 
> the printer understands.
>
> Idea: A linux box (could be a small one like a beaglebone or rasberry 
> pi but doesn't have to be) can read from the coco's serial, then send 
> whatever it gets through a modern driver to the printer. The program 
> would be really simple, just collect bytes until it gets a EOT (maybe 
> a few other things like FF too, depends on what the coco program 
> sends) then pipe the batch into lpr.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Don
>