"Mastery Development" Apple IIe Network Card

MarkO,

I just finished doing a Google Search for this item and according to a couple of the forums I visited, there were no manuals for this Internet / Printer Card.

That is puzzling to me as every other card out there has some sort of documentation, or software to go with it.

I was beginning to wonder if I was not performing a very through search... I am glad to hear that I am not the only one having Documentation Location Issues...

There are 6 for sale on ebay.. They appear to have some sort of DB-25 Daisy-Chain for the Physical Layer, but I was wondering how to write Software to communicate with them... These cards might make a good test interface for development of other network Interfaces... Any long term plans will require older Interfaces made in Large Volumes, or new Hardware..

You and Speedy have piqued my interest in the other thread. I keep looking into it.

Steven :)

I pulled my old 1983 Apple ][e out of Storage and my 100's of Disks, a couple months ago, and even though I have plenty of 5.25" SS/SD and DS/DD disks, I find it a little laborious to connect up ADTpro and send an Image over the Serial Port to a Floppy, so I can try a piece of Software I never used before.... Most of my Apple Software is Pre-ProDOS... If I had no floppies, it would be Harder..

I look at all the options that are currently out there...

The CF Card systems are an excellent idea, but you still need ADTpro, or unmount the CF Card and insert into a Modern Machine to change or Load it..

The few existing Ethernet Interfaces seem to be aimed at Web Surfing, which in 1991, would have been very do-able, but today.... There are Web Pages that just the HTML is 4-5 times the total memory of an Apple ][e, not including the Graphics....

What I see a need for is the Disk-less Workstation. The Apple boots off the Network Disk Server, the Disk Images look like a local FD or HD, but they reside on a Modern Linux, Mac or IBM/PC box.. If you have an Apple Floppy Drive, you can still use it, in conjunction with the Network Boot, if you have Floppies..

Hello Mark,
sorry for you but there is not the slightest chance to get documentation.... in fact the card is not realy a "network" Card like you might understand it... in fact it´s just a "multiple serial card" that enables you to use like any other asycronous serial card or like often realized in the mid 80´s by linking one or more apple´s together with modem cards 2400 Bd and exchange data by xmodem or other BBS-Software..... that has nothing to do with TCP/IP and the card was already in the mid 80´s a flop due to fact that cheaper and more robust modem cards had been availiable...

That explains why "Mastery Development" made Printer Interfaces too...

So it uses something like RS-485, which to a Software Interface looks like a RS-232 Serial Interface, but in fact is a Mulit-Node Networking Hardware.

So the ROM on the Card, must Handle the individual Device ID's......

That would actually be very cool.. My day job is Working with RS-485 and CAN Bus networking...

I might make a Bulk Offer for all 6 Cards... Possible Reverse Engineering the concept would be valuable..

In the OLD DAYS, the RS-232 and Modem combination used SLIP or PPP to make a TCP/IP connection over a Serial Port..

One or More of these cards, with another "embedded device" on the network with the WIZ812MJ that could function like a Router.. The WIZ812MJ would have the External IP Address, and a Quasi-TCP/IP for each of the Apple ]['s would communicate with "router"..

Another thing to the last posting:
in the older days the BBS-systems did not use anything like that ! The box just had 5 to 7 modems pluged in and each was just attempted by directly calling something similar like a office-phone-box that was able to handle the amout of lines routed by the telephone company to react to one telephone number ! ( i.e.. like nowadays a small office the for example gets 5 lines and 1 main number and the ability to program some 5 to 8 "sub-numbers" and the comunication was handled with xterm or xmodem or proterm...... your explanations target to the early web of the beginning 90´s ... i´m talking about the very beginning of the Arpa-net and the BBS-Systems of the time from 1981 to 1987.... and that had been straight modem to modem connections..... and the bbs-system just switched like a fast chopper between the lines and picked up the stuff in the "cache" of the serial communication of each line and dropped back the reply-stuff in output-port-stack.....
Most of the old BBS-systems did run at an IBM-AT and they where equiped for that purpose with multi-serial-cards that had 4 or 8 serial-ports.... the same technic was used at the wyse-terminals.... and back to your post: in those connections NO SLIP and NO PPP ! AOL and compuserve was several years later... and that was early web with internet explorer and netscape ... this cards are "pre-internet-explorer and pre-netscape and pre-Compuserve and pre-AOL !

I remember those days... In APR-1984, I bought a U.S. Robotics, 300/1200 Password Smart Modem. It had a Plastic Case, One LED, mostly Hayes AT command set.. I hooked it to the Apple with a Super Serial Card, and ran some obscure Terminal Program, then later used ASCII Express..

Most BBS's in my area were run Part-Time on C-64 computers, at 300 Baud.. The one 1200 bps system was run on a Northstar Advantage.. WOW.. That was fast.. I logged on to it, just to see how quick the Characters came across the Phone Line.

Did you have CompuServe and AOL over on "that side of the pond"??

If the "Mastery Development" cards are for multiple Modems, that is not very helpful, anymore...

Thanks for the Info.....

Hello Mark,
that was just the reason that i mailed the posting to forwarn you, that you probably might get disappointed to your expectations of the cards.... Yep.... we had here over the pond Compuserve beginning at the time somewhere at 1986...

Thanks again, for the Warning... I always perceived Compuserve and AOL as being very U.S. Centric...

AOL came over the pond nearly 8 years later, when the "browser-wars" between netscape and microsoft had finished and left netscape behind with a "trap-trial" bleeding out at court.... one of those scenes i don´t like Mr. Gates very much for.... he probably should have been sent to jail for the things he did in those days....

I would have to agree with you... I am a Long Time OS/2 ( eSC ) user, too.. And what Micro-Soft did to the IBM PC Group on the Pre-Loading of Windows 95 was just as Criminal... Micro-Soft, paid for it later, ( in the amount of $813 Million ( USD ) to IBM for Unfair Business Practices, or some such thing ) but the War was lost, and it Took about another 10 years of "Wimpy" Windows, before I ever got a system that could run longer than a week, straight...

- in those days i had quite close connections to the Chaos Computer Club in Germany which was something like the "official hacking scene" in the public - but in fact we just realy were bothered about the weak public security in the systems used in those days...

As should anybody that understands how computer data is stored.. Europe seems to have a much better "grasp", overall on Personal Data and who keeps it and how it is secured...

in those days i developed a external modem with the AMD8910 in the beginning and later that was just upgraded by plugging in the AMD8911 so at the beginning it operated at 300 Bd / 1200 Bd and after the upgrade it handled 1200 Bd / 2400 Bd..... as DIY project it could be built in one afternoon and cost something about 60 Bucks meanwhile the factory-built modems cost at least 150 Bucks in those days... it had the nickname "data-toilet" due to the fact that the rubber-muffs used to plugin the telephone-headset were bought in plumber-supplyshops and were originaly designed to fit between the waterflushbox and the tube running down to the ceramic-seat.....

Ahhh.. The Acoustic-Couple Modems... I have never own one of those or used one, but have seen many pictures... Still a Modem is a Modem, and Great Things can be Done, over the Wires.....

the university in Munich had a fixed link with the University in Hamburg and the other German Universities and we as students just created local BBS-Systems that again had been linked together with the computer main frame of the university - with the result that we could file-share and chat throughout all german universities... i remember that i spent lot of nights in those days upfront of my Apples or PC´s with a pizza and coke besides.... it was also the time we started to make propaganda for open source and supported the BSD system and i for example developed hardware drivers for the system.... later the war between AT&T started at court with Berkley and the final outcome was, that all the stuff was transfered from Berkley to Helsinki ( because AT&T had no access to the country nor the University over there ) and finally LINUX got "out of the craddle" over there..

I am sure that AT&T has been kicking themselves over the "Wholesale Licensing" of the UNIX Source Code to Berkley, back in the 1970's.. I think they did that when the Commercial Value of UNIX was not quite realized.. Because after all those Students got to "look at all the Goodies", and then Wrote better replacements, that "some" have since been re-integrated into the UNIX distributions, and even into Linux.. I don't have any BSD Systems running right now, but I really Like OpenBSD for a File/Web Server OS..

In fact the AT&T trial was entirely just a "fake" because we never had used anything from AT&T ... in fact the BSD system had more familiar connection to the UCSD system.... i have both sources entirly in my arcive boxes and therefor know what i´m talking about... at the beginning large parts had been written in Pascal and years later we switched over to C..... i prefered Pascal because it´s better self-documenting and therefor better for working in a community due to the fact that lot of programmers are rather lazy with documentation and later when switching to C that caused desastrous trouble... if you ever have tried to develop at a base of nearly undocumented C codes and sit there for hours waisting your time just because another guy was to lazy to spend some two or three hours for correct documentation of his "brain-output", you know what i´m talking about... in some times of those days i spent more time with disassembling rather that developing... just to get back to an acceptable documentation... thats licking at the lemmon without the tequilla thereafter to get the taste away...

I did not work with UCSD Pascal, but the Turbo Pascal on PC did not allow easy access to Low Level data structures, like 'C' or 'C++' does.. I own Turbo Pascal 5.5 for DOS, but have never used it, since I Own Turbo C 1.5, 2.0, BC 2.0, BC 3.1... I prefer to work with 'C', Even thought it is More Dangerous, because it allows More Power and Control at the Hardware Level..

The problem as I see it, is that Programmers treat 'C' ( and 'C++' ) as a High Level Language, when it really is a Low Level Language.. I guess that Assemble Language programmers are forced to be disciplined in their Coding, while 'C' ( and 'C++' ) programmers figure that it is not that Important.

( With Great Power, comes Great Responsibility... )

For those who want to revisit MSDOS programming, Borland has for "Educational Purposes", older Compilers found under the Tools Section at their current Web Site..

dont know if this is off topic are where i should post it but i have a idea to interfaceing a suoer serial board to a xport tcp brige device thats under 40 dollars something like the xport serial to tcp converter (http://www.gridconnect.com/xportdpnc.html)that acts as a web server if this is not the right thread then what thread do i need; or do i need a new on .
thxs kdhill
have a great day

This sounds like a great addition to the Hardware Developement and special Topics, Thread..

You might want to Post this Topic again, over there....