Software or documentation for D&N B10-1600 IO Board

[cyb2600]

Hi,

According to an ad I found this board supports up to 5 serial ports, 2 parallel ports and 8k of RAM. It looks like my board is only populated for two serial ports. Is there a manual for this thing so I could add a parallel port to it? And is there terminal emulation software that can use the serial ports?

Image (1).jpg (5.11 MiB) Viewed 1467 times

[Mark]

The manual was posted here a few years ago see viewtopic.php?f=4&t=675

As far as I know, the serial ports would look the same as an OSI 550 board, and be addressed at $CF00 and every 2 bytes for additional ports. OS65D did support I/O to these ports as device #8, although I don't know exactly how individual ports were selected programmatically. Upon boot all 16 port locations are initialized. Location $2323 (8995) is the index to the currently selected port (0 to 15) in OS65DV3.3. You can use PRINT#8 or LIST#8 to send output to a port or use the IO command to redirect default input/output.
Likewise the parallel port could be populated with a 6821 PIA and would likely be addressed at $F400, to be compatible with OS65D Centronics printer output, and would be output device #4. OS65U used these same ports & addresses, with additional ports for serial printers or multiple users on fully decked out systems.

OSI's "Modem" program could be patched to use these serial port addresses. What kind of terminal emulation do you have in mind?

[Edit] Oh it looks like D&N 1600 supported a Diablo style printer interface - that's a different sort of I/O which OS65D didn't support as far as I know. It exists in memory at $F500 on OSI's 555 "Jungle" board, used in C3 business systems. Diablo interface is 12bits. I've attached my Diablo notes in case you're interested.

[cyb2600]

Thanks! That's exactly what I was looking for. Is OSI's modem program the only terminal emulator available for the Superboard II/C1P? Something that could emulate at least VT52 would be great.

[bxdanny]

There was a program called "Chat" that acted as a more "intelligent" terminal program for the C1P/Superboard II, allowing saving received data and (I think) uploading data from RAM, but I never actually saw a copy. If anyone has it, please upload! But I don't think even that did emulation of a real terminal like the VT-52. The video driver in 65D 3.3 of course emulates a Hazeltine 1420 or 1500, but obviously requires a disk system. Otherwise, that MODEM program from OSI (written by my old boss Hal Pollenz) is pretty much all there is. Although I just might be able to adapt the driver I wrote for the SEB-3 board (which emulates the ADM/3A, whose functions are a subset of the Televideo 912 and 920) to the dimensions of the C1P screen.

Edit 3/28/2024: IIRC, ads for that "Chat" program featured a drawing of a cat , making the name a multi-lingual pun, as "chat" means cat in French.
Going the other way in terms of presence or absence of features, there is also the very simple Dumb Terminal program that I published in OSI-tems Volume II, #5.