hitchens@ut-sally.UUCP (Ron Hitchens) (05/11/84)
[squish] I just took a look at the item in the June Analog (mentioned in the orig article), it's obviously just an Atrai serial bus connector to DB25 cable. What that means is that any device it is connected to is plugged directly into the bus. Not a good thing if you want to access a different device (like a disk drive). An intelligent, non-Atari, device (like a Hayes modem) could cause severe problems for the "standard" Atari devices. It also means that special access techniques thru SIO are neccessary in order to change the POKEY clock rate on the serial bus. I'm sure that's what the software on the included disk is for, but a little more is involved than the average CIO device driver. Anything which uses standard R: access will probably work OK (as long as it doesn't access any other serial bus device), but something making direct calls to SIO may be in trouble. Using it for connecting a printer may not work because the printer would think everything coming across the bus was for it. Unless their driver is very sophisticated mixing accesses to other devices my not be possible. Hard to say. I think it's a good idea, I even considered rigging one up myself, but it can't be considered a direct replacement for the 850. Be sure to test it out before buying. All of this is pure conjecture, based solely on my knowledge of Atari hardware and software. Hope it's been of some help. Ron Hitchens hitchens@ut-sally.UUCP ------------------------------------------- [what's the current release date for Atari Unix?]