This sounds promising!
with the right software it should be possible to make a drive mapping to
the pc.
The software should probably be written like a disk rom. This is the same
as a ramdisk for
dos1 does.
One more comment though,
why not make the single port version first?
I don't think there are many people (except mr. Witkop) who have more than
two msx computers.
I have a sony rs232 which contains the bios, so perhaps this is usable.
The problem is again the software, I need some kind of sever program for
the pc,
and a client program for the msx.
I do know some assembly for the msx, and I know how the diskrom principle
works,
but I don't get a clue how to program the rs232. Perhaps Erik de Boer knows
this.
Philip
At 19:38 13-11-98 +0100, you wrote:
>Yes, I'm currently working on something like this.
>I came up with the idea of making a bi-directional interface for
>the MSX. It had to be 8-bits. And since the parallel port of
>the pc is also bi-directional and 8-bits we planned to develop
>a bi-directional printerport for the msx.
>Erik the Boer ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) made a layout of a printed circuit
>board for me but all is stil in it's early development stages.
>The board has to modes. One of them generates an interrupt on #38
>whenever a byte is sent. The other one is withoput the interrupt.
>Both modes are latched so you don't have to poll anything which saves
>cpu-time.
>
>Now the plans have changed somewhat. Because I thought it would also be
>fun if you could also link all your msx-es together. But that would mean
>that one MSX had tot have two printerport cartridges. And since most
>MSX-es only have two external cartridge slots this doesn't leave any
>room for extra harware like an scc cartridge or slotexpander.
>Another problem was that both cartridges couldn't use the same I/O
>adresses. They had to have a dipswitch in order to select another range
>of I/O adresses for one of them.
>
>So i'm redesigning the stuff.
>The new plan is to create one cartridge with two parrallel printerlike
>ports on it. This saves one slot but the cartridge does become bigger.
>You can use it to either link your MSX to the parrallel port
>of your PC, or link your MSX to another MSX, or both;)
>
>I was writing a driver for the PC which makes the PC the slave
>so you could access the harrdisk directly with some kind of
>file transfer protocol. I don'y know how to make the MSX see your PC as
>another drive though.
>
>But I'm still some months away of finishing this project because
>I also have a night job and have to go to university in the daytime.
>
>So here's what you can do on short term;
>- Connect the serial port of the pc to an rs232 msx cart.
>But then your problem would be the software for msx. There isn't any
>exept for bbs's and thephilips rs232 doesn't have an built in rs232 rom.
>So you can't use those system calls either.
>- Connect an MSX joystick port to the parrallel port of your pc.
>You can do 4-bit biderectional parrallel transfers this way.
>You'll have to write the software yourself. But both the msx joystick
>port and the pc parralllel port are well documented.
>
>Good luck!
>
>Gerald
>
>
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