Adventures
With Serial Connections.
When i first started to look into getting serial transfers running between the //c and another machine i was a bit intimidated, i kept putting it off as i thought that i would fail to get it working. Part of me thought that i needed to make a cable and frankly after reading about making null modem cables, i got a bit lost.
So this is the easy peasy newbie guide to getting serial transfers working. If you know your stuff go here for a solid and technical guide to what you need to do; pin outs and so on.
If you don't know much, then stay with me.
Firstly - you need a cable, you can make one or buy one - just go buy one. I bought mine here
As you can see from the picture, one end fits into the back or the //c and the other is a female Mac mini 8 Din. This means that any other regular Mac serial cable is the other half of this cable arrangment. Mac serial cables are cheap and plentiful on ebay, cheap even if you get it shipped from the other side of the world.
We have our cable, we now need software. There are two things we are going to do. The first is a file transfer and the other is .dsk transfers. With .dsk transfers, you will have a whole world of Apple ][ software to play with.
.DSK (Disk) TRANSFERS
I was transfering between my Mac SE and my Apple //c.
On the Mac you need a program called MacADT. Here is the main ADT page, which tells you all about it. The downloads section will give you various flavours to try. If you have no Apple ][ software, it also explains how to get things going.
However for our purposes, i am assuming two things. The first is that you have a Dos3.3 disk of some sort and you want to do this with a Mac running system7. I don't know about you, but my //c sits with my old kit out the way. Having other old kit do this task is just more convienient and *nicer* - don't ask why.
So here is MacADT that will run on a sys7 machine.
Download it and stick it on your old Mac. Next get your Dos3.3 boot disk. If you don't have one, then stick in any other menu software disk. If the disk when booting up, does not start with the ProDos strap line, and it is not a full commercial copy of a single program, then there is a good chance if you press ESC or a range of other ways to halt a program, you will be dumped into Dos3.3.
From there:
Type "IN#2" and return-key; to set the standard input to modem port. So remember to stick your cable into the modem/printer port on your //c
Then:
Type [ctrl-A] 6B and return-key; to set the speed to 300 baud.
Now stick a blank disk into the //c - we will use this to make a bootable ADT disk, but it also acts as insurance.
At this point start "MacADT", and select "Send ADT Program..." from "Install" menu. Click "Start Sending" button to send "adt.dmp" to the //c. It takes its time, but your heart will be skipping as your screen starts to fill up with characters. After sending, click "End" button.
Once the file has transfered, type "BRUN ADT" and return-key to start the ADT program on the //c.
At this point the ADT prog has written itself to the blank disk in the //c - it is not bootable, but it is usable should you have an accident at this point (like i did)
If you mess things up and lose the ADT prog from the //c, reboot with the disk you just wrote in, it won't work, but will drop you at DOS. Just type BRUN ADT, and your prog is back.
However we get to this point, we really want to make a bootable ADT disk.
SPEED - So far we have transfered a file at 300 baud, it worked and you are happy, lets go faster! - On the MacADT running on your old Mac, pull down the speed menu and set it to 9600 baud. On the //c type "C" for configure and set the speed to 9600 baud also. If this fails, then drop down the speed on both machines and try again. At least, you should manage 1200 baud. 9600 works for me.
Next type "R" for recieve and "ADT.DSK" and then the return-key on the //c. This will transfer the ADT.DSK file and then write it to disk, When finished you have a bootable ADT disk, and the world is your oyster.
PROBLEMS - The only problems i have encountered so far are as follows:
Corrupt .DSK files. Use a new machine to download them. A naked unzipped .DSK file can be mangeled by a browser, so if you have a bunch of files that never seem to work and you are using an old browser, IE5 or earlier, it could be the problem. Some folk, aware of this add another extension to the .DSK file, so it becomes .DSK.ZIP - your browser will download this fine. If you are downloading archived .DSK files and they never open, then it could be because they are only named as archives. Just delete the second extension and try again.
.DSK that are less than 140k - this version has a problem; in that it won't; work with .DSK files that are not the whole 140k. Not sure why. If it is an issue, then go find a newer version of MacADT and try again.
Finally - system bombs on the old Mac. When i did this for the first time, all worked well. When i came back the next day, i had many many system bombs before i could get the SE to work with the //c.
Solution? - Make sure appletalk is switched off.
FILE TRANSFERS
Well if you have .dsk transfers working, why would you need to transfer files? Your not going to do anything except play games after all are you?
Ahem! - anyhoo - I did my file transfers using KERMIT65 (archive)
I did actually want to use ZLink (archive) as it can do batch transfers, but alas, it did not seem to want to play ball. I did manage to get the text to move between both machines, but file transfers never seemed to work. Still working on that one.
So Kermit it is. It works well, but you are limited to one file at a time. The bigger problem is that the prog' makes calls to the disk just before a transfer takes place. So if you only have one drive, you need to put the files for transfer on the Kermit disk. The Kermit disk only has about 40k free when you start.
Solution? - Make a copy of the Kermit disk; a direct copy, as you want the volume information to be the same. Then delete all the files except the kermit.INT file. You now have a disk with only one file on it. When you boot and start transfers with the full Kermit disk, at the actual point of file transfers (before clicking for SEND or RECEIVE), just swop these disks about and the Kermit prog' thinks everything is fine. The .INT file is not big, so you have most of a disk to use for file transfers.
Clunky, but it does work.
MODEM
So, at this point i had file transfer and .DSK transfers working. All is well with the world. What next? Why getting the Apple //c online of course!
Now a 1mhz machine can't do much as far as online is concerned, but you can access dial-up BBS boards. Now there are not actually many of these around, quite a few in the US of course, but over here in the UK? Pretty much nowt. I did in the end manage to find two RISCOS boards i could dial into, to at least confirm everything was working. Should you be in the UK, then these are the numbers in question:
The Plasma Sphere BBS - 01925 757920
Arcade BBS - +44 20 8654 2212
So, what did i use? Well a wee wander to ebay snagged me a top of the range Motorola 28k modem for a Macintosh.  This has the same min 8 pin din as the serial cable, so would fit the female mini 8 din serial cable end for the //c that i had been using for everything else above without problems. The next thing was finding software. For that i used a prog; called Apple Access (archive) This turned out to be a fine wee program that has a good range of config options, and pretty much worked for me straight out the box.
And i tell you, getting the first text transfers between the Mac SE and //c made my heart skip a beat (yes i know how sad that is), but getting the //c to actually dial into another computer, well! that was quite thrilling!
I do hope to eventually find a local-ish service that offers a dial-up unix shell account. If i do, i would be able to harness the power of unix from the //c!
That would make me happy.
END
So there you are. From having an Apple //c and being a bit intimidated to try serial connections, within a week or so i managed .DSK transfers, serial file transfers and got the wee beauty online, which for a machine from 1984 pleased me somewhat. All i need do now, is set up my own dial-up BBS running on the //c for the next retrochallenge.
:-) |