Yes. The
bit-banger is fairly usless for serial input, although it's fine
for output. I suspect it was mainly used for driving a serial printer (I
Can someone clarify what "bit-banger" means and why it was different from a
contemporary serial interface card?
'Bit banging' is a common term for doing the serial<->parallel conversion
in software (using shift instructions, etc) rather than using a hardware
UART (or ACIA, etc) chip. It doesn't necessarily only refer to RS232
interfaces, it's quite common to say something like "I'm bit-banging the
I2C protocoi on a couple of the port A pins of that PIC".
The bit-banger that I refered to here is whichever of the Apple cards
didn't use a UART chip. There seem to be 2 approximately contemporary
cards, and I am sure to get them the wrong way round, but here goes :
The Serial Interface, which contained a few TTL chips, and a couple of
PROMs. This is the one I call the bit-banger
The Coommunication card which contains a 6850 ACIA (similar to a UART).
-tony