Talking of the 380Z...

[Jules Richardson]

On Thu, 2005-06-30 at 20:50 +0100, Tony Duell wrote:
> Since the 380Z seems to be popular at the moment, does anyone have info 
> on 2 bits that are not properly described in the Information File? 
> 
> The first is the dual cassette controller. The pinout of the 7 pin 
> cassette socket is given, as of course is the schematic of the VDU board 
> that contains the cassette circuitry. The controller seems to contain a 
> couple of relays to control the recorders (were these powered from the 
> system 5V line or a separate power supply?) and switching to allow either 
> one recorder to be used, or two with one used for recording the other for 
> playback. It's possible to make some guesses as to how it was wired, but 
> some real details would be nice

Hmm... the couple of references I've seen to it in RML documentation
suggest that it was a 3rd party thing, rather than an RML part. They
talk as though it was some standardised thing built into dual cassette
drives, or possibly that there was some magic box that sat between the
380Z and a pair of standard tape drives.

Either way, the impression is that it was nothing to do with RML...

RML documentation is all over the darn place though - they're not
particularly consistent in a lot of cases, so snippets of info tend to
be splattered right across their documentation.

> The second is the SIO-2 board. This was a bit-banged serial port using, 
> IIRC, 3 lines of the user port. 2 ouput lines for TxD and thr reader 
> control relay, one input for RxD. At least knowing what port bits were 
> used would be a help...

According to the COS 3.4 Reference Manual: "Example programs for driving
a 20mA or RS232 serial device via the RML SIO-2 and SIO-2B interfaces
connected to the user I/O port can be found in the Option ROM listing"

So that might help - if you can find it! I've just checked my pile of
RML docs and I haven't got a copy of the option ROM listing :(

Mind you, according to Paul Williams' site I have a few docs that aren't
in this pile in front of me - so I'll go hunting in the loft in a sec as
I must have some more somewhere! ;)

cheers

Jules