12 Sep
2007
12 Sep
'07
6:50 a.m.
From: "Ethan Dicks" <ethan.dicks at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: 8-bitters and multi-whatever
On 9/11/07, Allison <ajp166 at bellatlantic.net> wrote:
There were a few simple schemes but excluding myself
how many hobbiests
back then had two or more systems?
In 1982, the year you quoted for those Arcnet networks,
at age 16, I
had 4 systems, a PET, a C-64, a Cosmac Elf, and a PDP-8/L
<snip>
Of those, due to minimal I/O and/or functionality,
only the PET and the C-64 were "real" systems.
Since I couldn't afford an IEEE-488 disk drive,
rather than just move
files back and forth on tape, basing it upon the cable and software
from a contemporary "Byte" magazine, I fabricated my own
nybble-with-handshake cable between the user ports of the PET and the
C-64, and moved stuff from one to the other over that. I might have
used serial, if I'd had an ACIA-based port for my PET (there were a
couple that sat in an expansion ROM socket), or if I'd understood more
about the nature of serial comms and crufted up my own bit-banging
routines for the PET (the C-64 had that in ROM already). I understood
parallel communications, so a nybble at a time it was.
--------
You mean you didn't just make a simple cassette "null modem" cable?
I still have the 30 footer that connected my upstairs "play" PET to the
downstairs "work" one. Lots of people (especially schools)
"networked"
them that way in those distant days.
mike