On Tue, 3 Jun 2008, Allison wrote:
Do you recall
anything about the semi-mythical Corvus interface for the
VT180? It's mentioned in the Corvus technical literature, but I've never
talked to anyone that's actually seen it in the wild. I'm curious if it
ever actually existed.
Nothing mythical. There was a version of the corvus interface that
was a board that went under the Z80 and therefor allowed most any
Z80 system to accept the corvus hardware. It wasn't however sold as
a uniquely Robin thing.
Hmm. Definitely referred to as the VT180 interface in the Corvus book,
but perhaps that was more of a statement about the software?
If anyone has one of these, I am very interested in owning it.
FYI the Robin does not have any for of external bus.
If you want
access to the bus you have to jack up the Z80 and grab it there.
Corvus took other routes as well. The interface for Xerox 820 connects to
a pair of what appear to be parallel IO ports on the motherboard. Given
the limited transfer rate, it certainly did not need to be sitting on the
processor bus.
Steve
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