Here's one I made earlier !

[TGB1718]

Just found this in my box of old 8 Bit box. Was wondering if anyone else did anything like this.

 

When I bought my first 130XE I modified a printer interface that I made for my 800 using joystick ports 3 and 4

to work on the 2 130XE Joy ports. The only thing that was annoying was having to take the joysticks out whenever I wanted to print anything.

 

So I made this, it uses the external bus interface on the back of the 130XE, it's only a prototype, but like all prototypes it ended up being the finished product.

 

It is a Centronics Parallel Port Printer Interface and RS232 Serial Interface.

 

I wrote the software drivers to 'hide' in the system ROM area, the code copied the system ROM to RAM then overwrote the

system printer code with my code to run both Printer and Serial.

 

I used the Centronics interface all the time, it worked faultlessly for many years, I also tested the RS232 using a printer that used RS232

and later to transfer files between my 130XE and ST.

 

I was going to see if it could be produced commercially, but by the time I got round to it, the ST had been launched and I thought the market

for such an item would be too small to make it worthwhile.

 

I am still looking for the circuit diagram, I'll post it if I can find it. The most unfortunate thing is that the code I wrote is probably on some disks

that have degraded over the years and are now unreadble, but still have more to check so you never know.

 

 

[Marius]

WOW this is incredible. It looks a bit like the BlackBox RS232 + Centronics printer port. Great stuff!

[+Stephen]

That's crazy cool!

[JoSch]

Do you have schematics?

[TGB1718]

I have schematics somewhere, but have to look for them, been many years since I last saw them (and moved home since them)

[Sikor]

Maybe it will be interesting for you: http://www.atari.org.pl/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=247164#p247164- use google translator from Polish to English

[scotty]

Looks cool, but ENTIRELY too much work!! time that could be better spent playing games!!

 

 

Seriously though.... Really nice.