[comp.sys.amiga] parallel port<->ibm pc drivers

scotty@ziggy.UUCP (Scott Drysdale) (01/18/89)

many people have requested that i upload my amiga <-> ibm pc parallel port
software, which happens to include a device driver for the amiga and a
small program for the pc to allow the amiga to use an ms-dos file (preferably
large) as an amiga hard drive.  i will be cleaning up the code (as it's
pretty disgusting as it stands) this weekend, and i must also get in touch
with Scott Turner (who wrote scottdisk.device, on which i based my driver
code).  that may take some time, as my system doesn't seem to know how to
get to stride!l5comp!scotty.  be patient...  if i end up unable to contact
him, i'll post it anyway since he said in the documentation that it would
be ok to use it for non commercial purposes etc, and it would be ok to
adapt it to use another controller (scottdisk.device was a homebrew SCSI
controller driver - i think an ibm pc qualifies as a "controller," don't
you? 8-)).

anyways one of my problems has been that i am reprogramming a few bits of
CIABDDRA (bit 0 to input mode, bit 1 to output mode - bit 1 is "normally"
an input also), and something in the system is trashing them once in a
while rendering the link inoperative.  disabling interrupts, reprogramming
the DDR, doing a transfer, and reenabling interrupts fixes it, but causes
interrupt driven things grief.  these experiences were under 1.1 and 1.2
(yes, this project is OLD).  i will try it under 1.3 this weekend when i
borrow a pc from work (we'll see if it gets above the 25Kbytes/second the
turbo XT i had it hooked up to could do - this machine will be a 25Mhz 386!).

one of the replies was from somebody from CATS, and i attempted to reply,
but the mail program sort of bit the big one somehow.  the gist of what
i'm reprogramming is above (except that i'm also making the 8 data bits
of the parallel port inputs/outputs as need be).  i'm acquiring the
parallel port and parallel bits resources correctly to the best of my
knowledge.  the serial.device was in use sometimes during the hang, and
sometimes not.  the parallel.device was never in use (i'm not THAT dumb).
1.1 and 1.2 were tried (will try 1.3 this weekend).

  --Scotty