Date   : Mon, 15 Nov 2010 17:21:09 +0000
From   : afra@... (Phill Harvey-Smith)
Subject: Beeb Networking - Was: No wonder CompSci graduates

Jules Richardson wrote:
> I wonder if efforts are best concentrated in USB-to-<mumble> devices? For 
> anything Internetty (and probably involving emulators) there's going to be a 
> reasonably-quick machine with 'net access and USB ports involved. I loathe 
> USB, but it is perhaps the logical choice.

Why do you hate USB ?

> <mumble> could be an adapter for any kind of vintage computer networking - 
> Econet / Torchnet, RML Znet etc.; why just limit to Econet?
> 
> The adapter provides a way of allowing vintage machines to connect to a modern 
> network, and also a way for emulated systems to connect to a vintage network. 
> Make it cheap and cheerful and dumb, though, and do all the grunt-work in 
> software on the modern system.

Something like one of the FTDI chips, say the vinculum on the datacentre 
  for example, or even simpler the FT245Bm, which on the Beeb side would 
appear as just a single byte I/O port, but on the PC/Mac side would use 
a virtual com port. Write your server to talk to that com port and off 
you go.

I believe that the Tandy CoCo folks have done something similar with the 
latest version of drivewire, which runs over the CoCo's bit-banger 
serial port. Drivewire incedentally started out as a virtual disk server 
for CoCo machines and has expanded to include networking, perhaps it's 
protocol could be used as a starting point ?

Cheers.

Phill.