[net.micro.cbm] PPlease explain IEEE-488 converters.

jlm@hpfcra.HP.COM (J. L. Marsh) (10/24/86)

I'm curious about how the C64 IEEE-488 interfaces make disk
accesses faster.  Are these interfaces just "converters" from the
serial port to the 488 bus?  (If so, all the speedup would come from
faster disks, I assume.  The C64 kernel firmware would still handshake
the serial bus at the same speed as always;  only the wait-for-data
times would decrease.  Does that sound correct?)

If 488 interfaces are not hooked to the serial port, how *are* they
interfaced?  Wouldn't some new disk driver code have to be added to
the kernel before the interface could be used?

Thanks.  Obviously, I've never seen one of these converters.

J. L. Marsh
Hewlett-Packard, Ft. Collins, Colorado
{ihnp4|hplabs}!hpfcla!jlm