drpeter Posted August 23 Author Share Posted August 23 18 hours ago, MrFish said: Yeah, that's pretty interesting to see it'd been updated to a single custom chip. The implication must be that they sold an awful lot of these... I think they produced one also for the C64- possibly other computers too? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted August 23 Share Posted August 23 22 minutes ago, drpeter said: The implication must be that they sold an awful lot of these... They're pretty plentiful on Ebay -- hence your ability to obtain one for a reasonable price there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drpeter Posted August 23 Author Share Posted August 23 7 minutes ago, MrFish said: They're pretty plentiful on Ebay Not in the UK, sadly. But the Atari 8-bit line wasn't a huge seller here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted August 23 Share Posted August 23 4 minutes ago, drpeter said: Not in the UK, sadly. But the Atari 8-bit line wasn't a huge seller here. Yeah, international shipping. Well, at least you got the model with more chips, if more is better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drpeter Posted August 23 Author Share Posted August 23 1 minute ago, MrFish said: Well, at least you got the model with more chips, if more is better. Here in the UK we love anything served up with lots of chips (fries to you) 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reifsnyderb Posted August 23 Share Posted August 23 (edited) 46 minutes ago, drpeter said: The implication must be that they sold an awful lot of these... I think they produced one also for the C64- possibly other computers too? I'd have to see if I can read the pictures, but maybe they used the 68HC05. That chip was a little more advanced than the 6805 in that it had an on-board ROM as well as RAM. https://www.nxp.com/docs/en/data-sheet/MC68HC05X16.pdf That would eliminate the ROM chip. I am not sure what the other chips did, but it may have eliminated them as well. Edit to add: I just checked the picture and the part number is an Xetec part number. That still doesn't mean it's not really a 68HC05. lol Edited August 23 by reifsnyderb Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted August 23 Share Posted August 23 14 minutes ago, drpeter said: Here in the UK we love anything served up with lots of chips (fries to you) As this bloke proves on a regular basis. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drpeter Posted August 23 Author Share Posted August 23 15 minutes ago, MrFish said: As this bloke proves on a regular basis. Extraordinary! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mathy Posted August 23 Share Posted August 23 Hello guys 22 hours ago, drpeter said: The SIO cable uses 6 lines from the SIO bus- clock out (pin 2, brown wire) data in (to computer) (pin 3, blue wire) ground (pin 4, cable shield with yellow sleeve) data out (from computer) (pin 5, white wire) command (pin 7, green wire) +5V (pin 10, red wire) Does that mean that the interface is bi-directional? Sincerely Mathy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reifsnyderb Posted August 23 Share Posted August 23 3 minutes ago, Mathy said: Hello guys Does that mean that the interface is bi-directional? Sincerely Mathy It may be. Can you disassemble the ROM? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mathy Posted August 23 Share Posted August 23 Hello Brian Just now, reifsnyderb said: It may be. Can you disassemble the ROM? Unfortunately, no. Sincerely Mathy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drpeter Posted August 23 Author Share Posted August 23 8 minutes ago, Mathy said: Does that mean that the interface is bi-directional? Good question, but there's no mention in the manual of it being used for anything but connection to a printer. The I/O pins on the 6805 can certainly be programmed to receive input data as well as outputting data... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leech Posted August 26 Share Posted August 26 On 8/23/2024 at 5:36 PM, drpeter said: Good question, but there's no mention in the manual of it being used for anything but connection to a printer. The I/O pins on the 6805 can certainly be programmed to receive input data as well as outputting data... (not an expert) But pretty sure Bi-directional is a thing most printers need, as you'd need to know when it's sent a line feed back to the computer (I think, I may just be pulling that explanation out of my ass, but it sounds about right). I still need to do more printing on my Atari / C64 / Apple IIGS... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leech Posted August 26 Share Posted August 26 On 8/12/2024 at 3:09 AM, pixelmischief said: I've recently connected a Star NX1000 via both the MIO and the P:R:. Funny though, I almost immediately went back to the FujiNet pushing to a Pi serving an inkjet. Kinda nice. I have a Samsung LaserJet with Parallel/Network/USB that should work fine on the Atari. I haven't tried it yet as the joy of printing from the Atari is in BANNERS! Hmm, I should print a few up, since I bought a giant box of paper that has the sheet feeder strips... I have the Atari 1025, or a Citizen GSX... something that is 24pin. Still wish I could find new color ribbons for that. Black ones are easy to find. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reifsnyderb Posted August 26 Share Posted August 26 (edited) 11 minutes ago, leech said: (not an expert) But pretty sure Bi-directional is a thing most printers need, as you'd need to know when it's sent a line feed back to the computer (I think, I may just be pulling that explanation out of my ass, but it sounds about right). I still need to do more printing on my Atari / C64 / Apple IIGS... Now that I think about it, I think "bi-directional printing" was an improvement whereby the print head printed both from left to right and right to left. It was a pretty nice improvement as the 1025 only printed from left to right....at something like 10 characters per second. So, after every line, the print head slowly went back to the left before printing another line. Meanwhile, the Start NP-10 printed from left to right, advanced a line, and printed from right to left. (The Star NP-10 was much faster, too!) There are other signal lines on the printers. See here: https://computer.howstuffworks.com/parallel-port1.htm Edited August 26 by reifsnyderb 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leech Posted August 26 Share Posted August 26 Just now, reifsnyderb said: Now that I think about it, I think "bi-directional printing" was an improvement whereby the print head printed both from left to right and right to left. It was a pretty nice improvement as the 1025 only printed from left to right....at something like 10 characters per second. So, after every line, the print head slowly went back to the left before printing another line. There are other signal lines on the printers. See here: https://computer.howstuffworks.com/parallel-port1.htm Yes! That's what it was... like not really bi-directional communication, but to let the printer know it can go back and forth (which is less important for laser/inkjets) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drpeter Posted August 26 Author Share Posted August 26 (edited) 55 minutes ago, leech said: (not an expert) But pretty sure Bi-directional is a thing most printers need, as you'd need to know when it's sent a line feed back to the computer (I think, I may just be pulling that explanation out of my ass, but it sounds about right). I still need to do more printing on my Atari / C64 / Apple IIGS... Bidirectional in the sense suggested by the question is a characteristic of the printer interface, not movements of the printhead- being the idea that arbitrary data (rather than simple status signals) can pass both ways to and from a connected peripheral. Reading up on the Wikipedia entry for the IEEE 1284 standard indicates that the earliest implementations of bidirectional Centronics parallel ports didn't start to appear until 1992, so I guess the 'serial data in' line of the Graphix AT is being used for something markedly less ambitious- perhaps someone with knowledge of the standard OS SIO implementation could shed light? Quote The original port design was send-only, allowing data to be sent from the host computer to the printer. Separate pins in the port allow status information to be sent back to the computer. This was a serious limitation as printers became "smarter" and a richer set of status codes were desired. This led to an early expansion of the system introduced by HP, the "Bitronics" implementation released in 1992. This used the status pins of the original port to form a 4-bit parallel port for sending arbitrary data back to the host. A further modification, "Bi-Directional", used the status pins to indicate the direction of data flow on the 8-bit main data bus; by indicating there was data to send to the host on one of the pins, all eight data pins became available for use. This proved adaptable, and led to the "Enhanced Parallel Port" standard, which worked like Bi-Directional mode but greatly increased the signalling speeds to 2 MB/s, and later the "Extended Capability Port" version increased this to 2.5 MB/s. Edited August 26 by drpeter 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phaeron Posted August 27 Share Posted August 27 I did a quick disassembly of the ROM and the answer is a bit mundane -- the reason the device needs SIO DATA IN is because it uses the standard printer SIO protocol and needs to be able to send ACK/Complete/status bytes back in response to commands. Beyond that, it responds to either P1: or P2: equally and supports just the Status and Write commands, so unremarkable for SIO command support. 4 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TGB1718 Posted August 27 Share Posted August 27 The 72000 device I have uses a 8035 CPU which has internal ROM and RAM, in spite of that it still uses and external ROM chip. On 8/24/2024 at 12:22 AM, Mathy said: Does that mean that the interface is bi-directional? These devices are not Bi-directional, I think as mentioned earlier, printers themselves (at least back then) only received data to print, the only thing the interface needed to know was "can I send data yet ) All handshaking done with 3 handshake lines ACK/BUSY from the printer and STROBE from the interface. I fact you can run it with just STROBE and BUSY if you wait for BUSY after STROBE is sent. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leech Posted August 27 Share Posted August 27 I guess the real question is; can we get 80 column letter quality printing out of the Atari these days? Since the daisy wheel printers are all sorts of dead (I know someone was trying to print up fixes for those, but it sounds like that project came and went for those paying attention). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pixelmischief Posted August 27 Share Posted August 27 I’m a little suspicious of the cable that goes between the MIO and the printer. Any idea where I can get a replacement? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reifsnyderb Posted August 27 Share Posted August 27 10 minutes ago, leech said: I guess the real question is; can we get 80 column letter quality printing out of the Atari these days? Since the daisy wheel printers are all sorts of dead (I know someone was trying to print up fixes for those, but it sounds like that project came and went for those paying attention). The Star NP-10 got near letter quality if the NLQ mode was enabled. The print was very good and it was hard to see the individual dots. If memory serves, that was a 9 pin printer. Later on, 24 pin dot matrix printers were released. Those could also do almost letter quality. The print quality was so good it was very hard to tell. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leech Posted August 27 Share Posted August 27 2 hours ago, reifsnyderb said: The Star NP-10 got near letter quality if the NLQ mode was enabled. The print was very good and it was hard to see the individual dots. If memory serves, that was a 9 pin printer. Later on, 24 pin dot matrix printers were released. Those could also do almost letter quality. The print quality was so good it was very hard to tell. Mine is a 24 pin dot matrix, but I got it for the Mega STe back in the day, never used it on the 8bit. I need to set it up. I also need to set up and play with the 1090xl instead of just letting it sit there looking cool. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reifsnyderb Posted August 27 Share Posted August 27 1 hour ago, leech said: Mine is a 24 pin dot matrix, but I got it for the Mega STe back in the day, never used it on the 8bit. I need to set it up. I also need to set up and play with the 1090xl instead of just letting it sit there looking cool. I need to get busy on that serial/parallel 1090XL card, too. 🙂 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+David_P Posted August 28 Share Posted August 28 8 hours ago, pixelmischief said: I’m a little suspicious of the cable that goes between the MIO and the printer. Any idea where I can get a replacement? I think Best may still have them - as I recall, the 850 to printer cables are the same. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.