VT340 Emulation

[David Brownlee]

On Sat, 26 Jun 2021 at 18:15, Paul Koning via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
> > On Jun 26, 2021, at 11:31 AM, Tapley, Mark B. via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
> >
> > At one point FTDI had a reasonably good reputation, and I own one of those devices based on that reputation. I have used it with no obvious problems connecting a TRS Color Computer 3 to an iMac G3 for a floppy-drive emulator (DriveWire on the iMac), but I think only for that application so far.
> >
> > Are there any particular pitfalls I should watch out for with the FTDI device, when/if I can get back to working with it?
>
> I once bought a USB serial port device with a DE-9 connector on it, Belkin I think.  It worked somewhat.  Might have needed its own driver, which on a Mac is highly unusual.  It gave me enough trouble I set it aside.
>
> Since then I've bought several different flavors of the FTDI USB serial device, one RS-232, one 5 volt logic, one 3.3 volt logic (the latter two with 6-pin connectors to fit onto pin headers such as are found on the BeagleBone Black).  They have always worked flawlessly (on my Mac), at a number of data rates: 4800, 9600, 19.2k, 115k.  I'll admit I haven't needed stranger cases like 5 or 6 bit data, or exotic slow speeds.  As I mentioned, if that need arises and FTDI isn't good enough I'll have the RPico to do the job.

I noticed this the other day, just in case it's of interest to anyone
on this thread.

| https://www.tindie.com/products/nsayer/ftdi-be-gone/
| FTDI-be-gone is a USB-to-serial adapter. The RS-232 variant has a
DB9M connector on one
| end and a micro-B USB connector on the other. The TTL variant has a
6 pin SIP header on the
| end opposite the USB connector. Both have two LEDs - a red one to
indicate transmitted data
| and a green one to indicate received data.
| The USB-UART chip is a Cypress Semi CY7C65213. Rather than use a
proprietary device
| driver to implement the serial port in the host, it relies on CDC
class drivers supplied by the
| OS.

Unrelated - if you know someone who works with clocks, or in other
ways has a natural affinity to even per second ticks,
https://www.tindie.com/products/nsayer/crazy-clock/ could be quite a
horrible/good present to get them depending on their sense of humour
(just bought one for a clock repairing geek friend :-p)

David