[comp.sys.atari.st] Cartridge Port

bissiri@blake.acs.washington.edu (Moja Fritzah) (08/15/89)

NOTATOR requires a dongle in the cartridge port for copy protection.
I would like to purchase the GCR... as well as a few other products
requiring use of the cartridge port.  

I know this subject has been of issue for as long as the machine
has been in existence.  But what is the latest development on the
expansion of the port?

C-Lab, the makers of NOTATOR, have come up with a product 
that allows 3 dongles to hang off the cartridge port.
They are asking $349.00 !!!  

I think this is perfectly unreasonable.  Anybody disagree?

-kevin
bissiri@blake.acs.washington.edu

ramsiri@blake.acs.washington.edu (Enartloc Nhoj) (12/10/89)

Considering all the discussion about cartidges lately,
I was wondering what the prospects are for building
an inexpensive multi-port extension that would allow
those who need the port for more than one application
to not have to turn the machine off.. reinstall "another"
cartridge or dongle etc.. Doing this on a regular basis
will only ask for problems.. guarranteed damage to the 
port and to the cartridge or dongle.

Specifically, I would like to get the GCR.. I also use
NOTATOR on a very regular basis.  There are other
commercial products requiring the use of the cartridge port,
obviously...  I assume building a cartridge extender is
difficult and costly.. otherwise there would be one on the
market...  C-LAB puts out "The Combiner" for $349.00.
Seems a bit pricey to me!  

Does anyone know of another in development.. or already available
that is reasonably priced?  

-kevin
ramsiri@blake.acs.washington.edu

rs0@beach.cis.ufl.edu (Bob Slaughter) (12/21/89)

I am looking for info on using the cartridge port as an I/O port.  I
need D0-D8, A0-A15, and how the port does read vs. write (MEMR* and
MEMW* lines line an InTel, or R/W* with clock strobe ala 6502).  The
docs that come with the ST have the pinouts for most of these, but the
port direction control is not clear at all from their diagram.  If you
have to know, this is related to C/MRI project from Model Railroader
(Computer/Model Railroad Interface), as now reprinted in Bruce Chubb's
"How to Build a Universal Computer Interface".  I know the port can be
written to, otherwise how do you set all those nice clock carts? :)  I
may not use the info right away, but it will be easier to ask now than
in 10 years or so, which is proabably get around to this.

--
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ignac@electro.UUCP (Ignac Kolenko) (12/22/89)

In article <21556@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> rs0@beach.cis.ufl.edu (Bob Slaughter) writes:
>I am looking for info on using the cartridge port as an I/O port.  I
>need D0-D8, A0-A15, and how the port does read vs. write (MEMR* and
>MEMW* lines line an InTel, or R/W* with clock strobe ala 6502).  The
>docs that come with the ST have the pinouts for most of these, but the
>port direction control is not clear at all from their diagram.  If you
>have to know, this is related to C/MRI project from Model Railroader
>(Computer/Model Railroad Interface), as now reprinted in Bruce Chubb's
>"How to Build a Universal Computer Interface".  I know the port can be
>written to, otherwise how do you set all those nice clock carts? :)  I



nope. its a read only port. hence the Atari name: ROM Cartridge Port. :-)

but you can develop ways of tricking the cartridge port to allow you to
do a write, which is basically how the clock cards are set on the ST. an
easy way of doing this is decoding a read from any address in, say the
$FA0000 range to be a 16 bit write to the cart port. thus, whatever address
with $FA in the upper 8 address bits can be turned into a write pulse,
(ROM4 is the strobe that's generated by the mmu i think) and use the
lower 16 bits of the address bus as the fudged data bus. not too pretty but
it works great.

(the addresses are off the top of my head, and may be wrong. mebbe someone
else can verify for me)



-- 
=====Ignac A. Kolenko (The Ig)           watmath!watcgl!electro!ignac=====
     co-author of QuickST, and the entire line of Quick Shareware!!!!
       "I don't care if I don't win, 'cause I don't care if I fail"
             from 'Youth Of Today' by SUBURBAN DISTORTION 

whitten@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu (11/11/90)

Does anyone know, well I know someone knows, but could someone tell me
how to toggle the ROM4 and ROM3 lines of the cart port?

I also will need to know how to put an address on the cart port lines,
and also read one.
 
Thanks,
Chris

==============================================================================
 WHITTEN@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU              Chris Whittenburg, Univ. of Kansas
 WHITTEN@UKANVAX.bitnet                        Electrical Engineering
==============================================================================