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C2n232

dave_m

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Does anyone know where I can procure a ready made C2N232 gadget?

It was designed by this gentleman:
Marko Makela

I am planning on pounding in a large basic program on my 8032 PET that is in a book plublished by Compute! but I have no way to save it as this point.
-Dave
 
Hi Dave,

Does the 8032 support the Vic20 and C-64 cassette recorders? These are so common people can't even give them away. Or are you looking at transferring the program to a modern machine for storage?

Tez
 
Tez,
Yes, the 8032 supports a cassette drive and I have recently bought one that is slowly coming by U.S. Pony Express from New York. I suppose that would do for local storage, but I would like to have the software available to the PET users community. In its final form, it is a program that will be an assembly language RAM based version of Batpro that will safely reside in the upper 4K of RAM memory. It will work on all versions of the PET and the Commodore 64.
 
A number of C2N232I exist in kit form, but it takes some SMD soldering skills to put one together. For various reasons those kits never were assembled, but if you want I can put you in touch with a gentleman who apparently have kits to sell.

In the mean time, you could consider solder together either of the cbmlink compatible cables. They won't be as fast as the C2N232, but all are supported by the same software.
 
A number of C2N232I exist in kit form, but it takes some SMD soldering skills to put one together. For various reasons those kits never were assembled, but if you want I can put you in touch with a gentleman who apparently have kits to sell. .

Yes, please especially if the chip is pre-programmed. If not, is it a hard chip to program?

In the mean time, you could consider solder together either of the cbmlink compatible cables. They won't be as fast as the C2N232, but all are supported by the same software.

This is a kind of confusing page with lots of cables. The PC that I will be using is an 133MHz Pentium with both a parallel and serial port. Is the cable I want to build the PC64 cable or the prlink cable with connections between the PET User Port and the PC parallel port?

On the PC side, will the cbmlink software work with DOS or maybe an older version of Windows like Windows 95? I hope I will not have to compile a lot of C source code as that is a little over my head with my lack of software tools, etc. I took a unix class a hundred years ago and I don't remember any of it. :)

The C2N232 software looks a little more straight forward for a non programmer.

Thanks,
Dave
 
Yes, I think the PC64 cable is the recommended one if it works for your purpose. There should exist DOS/Windows executables, otherwise I may be able to compile some for you. I could even make Win32 command line executables using the MinGW/gcc compiler.
 
Anders, OK I'll try to build the PC64 cable first. I will go over all the software information on the cbmlink page and if I get stuck, I call for help here.
Thanks, Dave
 
OK, I have the parts to build the PC64 cable. But before I get too far, can someone verify that on the PET side, I will be hooking up to the user port that contains the PA0 through PA8 signals?

The cmblink documentation calls out the PB0 through PB8 signals on the cable wire list which I think must be a typo.
Thanks, Dave

cbmlink release notes
 
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The signals have different names depending which C= computer you are looking at, i.e. compare the manuals for the VIC-20 and C64. Generally PA0-PA7 should be equal to PB0-PB7, but as you can see in two designs there is a PA2 which on the third (Amiga) design says CB2.
 
Anders,
I am well along with my pc64 cable as I started with a PC parallel port extension cable and cut off the socket end and will hook up the PET user port connector there. Oddly the wires did not follow the brown, red, orange, etc color code for 1,2,3 as I thought it might. I'm glad I buzzed it out.

Is it possible for you to build me a MS-DOS executable file with the following parameters:
Cable type: pc64
computer type: PET4001
Memory Expansion: plain
Thanks, Dave
 
Anders,
I am well along with my pc64 cable as I started with a PC parallel port extension cable and cut off the socket end and will hook up the PET user port connector there. Oddly the wires did not follow the brown, red, orange, etc color code for 1,2,3 as I thought it might. I'm glad I buzzed it out.

Is it possible for you to build me a MS-DOS executable file with the following parameters:
Cable type: pc64
computer type: PET4001
Memory Expansion: plain
Thanks, Dave

4001??? I thought it was for an 8032? In which case I wouldn't mind a copy...
 
Well, as far as I understand the serial software on the PC side should be identical no matter what machine you connect the cable to.
---
Well, I was actually just yanking Dave's chain, but if there really *is* a 4001 model then my face will be very red indeed...
 
It doesn't seem too uncommon that people refer to the 4000 series as the 4001 series, even if there is no machine with that specific number. Likewise for the 3001 series, which would be equivalent to the 3000 series. I suppose people do this because they think about the 2001 and assume all PET/CBM should have a model number ending on 1 or higher.

Actually it seems in Germany and perhaps Sweden, the PET/CBM 3008 was sold as 3001. I can't say I ever saw one myself, but I may have missed that detail. I suppose this was an alternative to calling it 2001N.

This page claims the PET 3001 had to be renamed as CBM 3008 due to the brand conflict with Philips.
http://www.cbmitapages.it/pet/pet-modeng.htm
 
Mike, the callout 'pet4001' causes cbmlink to use an 'include subdirectory' in the make file that contains the 40XX and 80XX PET families as I understand it (I'm no expert on this stuff).

I was all wrong there. The pet4001, pc64 designations were too simply help one find the right place in the directory tree to find the correct server side program (PET prg file).

After messing around with the bcc compiler which can target DOS com files, I had to give up. Without having a Windows equivalent to the unix 'make' command, I could not use the makefile.DOS properly.

However I found a Win32 executable in the archives (cbmlink.exe), so now my plan will be to add a PCI parallel port to my XP machine and run cbmlink from there. This is not as handy as the two machines are not in the same room, but it should work.
 
I've looked at CBMlink a few times and given up in frustration every time; there's mention of a DOS binary in several places but I've never found one.

When I read "it is assumed that anyone using DOS would use Linux if he could" I knew this was going to be way more complicated than it needs to be...

Guess I'm spoiled by the straightforward transfer routines for my other machines.

mike
 
When I read "it is assumed that anyone using DOS would use Linux if he could" I knew this was going to be way more complicated than it needs to be...

Yes, I was puzzled by that statement also. But after hours trying to compile cbmlink using bcc and a large array in input c files, I now understand that the author was gently telling us that you will need to have a machine running linux and a full set of compiler tools to correctly generate the file.

As to why he just didn’t include 'cbmlink.com' in his archive, I’m guessing that unix gurus think that software is so much fun that he didn’t want to cheat the rest of us from having the pleasure of compiling our own executable.

Personally, I would rather have just grabbed the executable and proceeded with my main project of transferring some PET software. :)
-Dave
 
Yes, I was puzzled by that statement also. But after hours trying to compile cbmlink using bcc and a large array in input c files, I now understand that the author was gently telling us that you will need to have a machine running linux and a full set of compiler tools to correctly generate the file.

As to why he just didn’t include 'cbmlink.com' in his archive, I’m guessing that unix gurus think that software is so much fun that he didn’t want to cheat the rest of us from having the pleasure of compiling our own executable.

Personally, I would rather have just grabbed the executable and proceeded with my main project of transferring some PET software. :)
-Dave
Don't get me started on these folks who insist that just plugging in a tool to do a job is not 'real' computing, and that everyone needs to know how to compile from source, where to find the tools and sift through the many revisions etc., and finally be able to figure out why it won't compile which is usually the case...
 
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