PC-8801 serial port?

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tschak909
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Posts: 171
Joined: Sun Sep 09, 2018 5:44 pm

PC-8801 serial port?

Post by tschak909 »

When you guys were bringing up the PC-8801 target, did any of you come across any info on programming the built in serial port? Am gathering data so I can quickly bring up the 8801 port.

-Thom
shram86
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Posts: 13
Joined: Sun Mar 07, 2021 11:10 pm

Re: PC-8801 serial port?

Post by shram86 »

The official manuals are pretty detailed in this regard, I'm pretty sure I've seen them scanned on archive.org.

Also, Cisc distributes the source for Xdisk2 along with the app, which has everything laid pretty bare.
http://retropc.net/cisc/m88/dl/

For information on accessing the serial port in Windows 10 this got me going:
https://www.xanthium.in/Serial-Port-Pro ... -Win32-API
shram86
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Posts: 13
Joined: Sun Mar 07, 2021 11:10 pm

Re: PC-8801 serial port?

Post by shram86 »

I forgot to mention one thing of note that is particularly not well documented is that the OPEN COM command in N88-BASIC uses the same parameters as terminal / TERM, where:

Code: Select all

TERM "[COM:][<PARITY>[<BIT>[<STOPBIT>[<XON_SW>[<S_PARAM>]]]]]",[,[<MODE>][,<MEM_SIZE>]]
and:

Code: Select all

PARITY (E, O, N) : Even, Odd, No parity
BIT (7, 8)       : Should be 7 with parity, 8 with no parity
STOPBIT (1, 2, 3): Number of stop bits. 1 = 1, 2 = 1.5, 3 = 2.
XON_SW (X, N)    : X = Xon/Xoff enabled, N = disabled.
S_PARAM (S, N)   : When bit is 7, use this to enable to store characters > 128. N = disabled.
MODE (F, H)      : Full duplex or Half duplex mode.
MEM_SIZE         : Define BASIC variable size on remote connection. defaults to 1024
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