BBC printer port (ever used for anything else?)

From: Tony Duell <ard_at_p850ug1.demon.co.uk>
Date: Sun Sep 19 15:20:29 2004

> > It's brought off-board. It's linked to a 24 pin Blue Ribbon connector
> > (looks like a GPIB connecotr, but isn't the same wiring, of course) on
> > the back. I will certainly make a cable to link it to a printer...
>
> I may have the proper cable. I have an ACW but I think I finally

Making the cable is not a problem for me. Heck, it's straight-through
IDC, although the manual does suggest using twist-n-flat cable. Since
I've never seen a Beeb pritner cable that was twist-n-flat and since the
internal cable is plain ribbon, I don't think it matters that much if I
keep the cable short.


> > Ah, so there is a loader program. I will dig about on the 'BBC Lives'
> > website, I can't believe there's nothing suitable there.
>
> There are *many* loader programs and they're easy to write. This

Well, I wasn't really a Beeb hacker in the old days... And I don't claim
to be a programmme now (the hardware side, on the other hand...). But I
susepct I'll be able to find something or write something.

I asusme that at least some of the loading utilities will work if the
particular sideways socket has to be selected to enable writing to that
chip. In other words you have to load the sideways ROM select register
with the number of the back you want to write too (thus disabling BASIC
and DFS, and ...) I am liable to end up with 2 sideways RAM banks (the
B+ board can take 32K memory devices, 62256s are cheap, it's just a
matter of plugging one in and connecting up the write enable line), so
I'd want to be able to select a particular one for loading.

> > If you want to transfer individual files, there is a kermit for the beeb
> > (and for that matter for the ACW's 32016 side...). Kermit may not be
> > efficient, but it's available for anything....
>
> I know, look in the sources of ACW kermit and see who ported it :-)

Oh, right :-)

> But my experience has been that sucking off the entire disk as an image
> is not only faster, its more reliable in terms of disk errors, plus you
> find interesting deleted files that way :-)

It depends on what you want to do with it. The problem is that a 40 track
image is not a lot of use to somebody with 80 track drives (and vice-versa).

-tony
Received on Sun Sep 19 2004 - 15:20:29 BST