3 Oct
2003
3 Oct
'03
7:09 a.m.
For about 13-14 years many Atari 8bit users have been able to connect their
computers directly to PC's and use the PC hard drives, floppy drives,
printer ports and modem ports as peripherals through a device called the
SIO2PC, this little RS232 converter connects from an Atari 8bit SIO port
(Serial I/O, basically a very simplistic, early version of what is now
called USB... in fact one of the patent holders of the USB is the designer
of the SIO bus interface....)
The SIO signals are converted to standard RS-232c signals and the other end
of the interface is connected to a PC serial port, the PC runs a small
program in the background where you can configure how you want to share its
resources with the Atari. Now the Atari can boot directly off of a PC
with a bootdisk image, you are able to load files that you download off of
the internet onto the PC, you can even telnet into an Atari 8bit with
certain versions of the PC-side software....
SIO2PC interfaces are sold at www.sunmark.com and there are several
software packages to use with it, one of the best is Steve Tuckers
PROsystem.
Okay, so enough of the bringing everyone up to speed part.... the reason for
the above introduction is that I recently found a discovery that in 1983 one
of Atari's mainframe OPS had built the very same interface that allowed
Atari 810 disk drives and 8" disk drives to hook up to a VAX through one of
its Serial ports and allow a Vax users to read/write Atari DOS disks.
This was an internal utility that Atari engineers and programmers used to
compile their software on the Atari Vax'es, then dump the code onto standard
Atari DOS diskettes so they could be tested on the computers or Master
images could be made and sent to have a disk product produced from the
Master.
I don't know if the mailing list allows attachments, so if anyone wants a
copy of this .EXE, the docs and schematic, please email me directly and I'll
send you an email with the ZIP file and you can put it onto your Vax and try
it out.
Curt