Message-ID: <287@boulder.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 17-Jan-85 17:35:46 EST
Article-I.D.: boulder.287
Posted: Thu Jan 17 17:35:46 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 21-Jan-85 03:08:49 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Lines: 40


I:   Does *ANYBODY* have a termcap for the IIe with the Apple 80 column
board? Please reply via this newsgroup.

II:  (FLAME) I have been using my IIe to communicate with our local system at
1200 baud for a year now, and have had real frustrations with
the slowness of the Apple Monitor. I need to pad linefeeds with
three nulls to keep the monitor from dropping one to three characters
at the beginning of lines. I have been using the Apple SuperSerial
card, and could find no way around the problem. This is not a particularly
big problem if one communicates with only one or two systems, but
became a real hassle when dealing with a number of different ones:
VAX/Unix, VAX/vms, Cyber, Lockheed Dialog, etc.
I have been phoning the Apple hotline about this every few months, trying
to get a) a straight answer,and b) a solution to my problem.  The first
few calls resulted in answers of "I don't know," "It must be your
software," (stupid answer) "maybe it's the modem," (another stupid answer)
etc etc. Finally, a few months ago, one of the guys admitted that it
was the monitor program on the 80 col. card ( a straight answer), but his
(non)solution was to hang around the local computer store and wait for
an upgrade that might appear some year. arghhhhhh.
First, the types that populate most computer stores are hostile to
any question except "Can I buy a Lisa if I pay full price?"
And second, most of them have the technical smarts of a planarian worm.

What is most irritating about this is an attitude on the part of
the customer service people that if there is no currently available
fix to the problem, that the problem isn't a problem, it is an
undocumented feature.

I like Apple, and I think they are good for the industry; but let's not
confuse them with a *real* computer vendor, that gets on bugs, has a real
field service organization, etc.  Oh, by the way, if anybody does have
a fix for the monitor problem, I would appreciate hearing about it.



V. Heuring
Electrical and Computer Engineering Dep't.
University of Colorado - Boulder.

Message-ID: <7570@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Sun, 20-Jan-85 02:22:03 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.7570
Posted: Sun Jan 20 02:22:03 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 23-Jan-85 05:37:15 EST
References: <287@boulder.UUCP>
Distribution: net
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab
Lines: 16

#
# Apple //e with 80-column card
# The modem interface is permitted to discard LF (maybe DC1), otherwise
# passing characters to the 80-column firmware via COUT (PR#3 assumed).
# Auto-wrap does not work right due to newline scrolling delay, which also
# requires that you set "stty cr2".
# Note: Cursor addressing is only available via the Pascal V1.1 entry,
# not via the BASIC PR#3 hook.  All this nonsense can be avoided only by
# using a terminal emulation program instead of the built-in firmware.
ab|apple2e|Apple //e:\
	:bl=^G:bw:cd=4*^K:ce=4^]:cl=100^L:co#80:ho=^Y:is=^R^N:kd=^J:kl=^H:\
	:kr=^U:ku=^K:li#24:me=^N:mr=^O:ms:nw=100\r:rs=^R^N:se=^N:sf=^W:so=^O:\
	:sr=^V:up=^_:\
	:bs:nc:
ap|apple2e-p|Apple //e via Pascal:\
	:cm=^^%r%+ %+ :tc=apple2e:

Message-ID: <164@moncol.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 22-Jan-85 10:45:57 EST
Article-I.D.: moncol.164
Posted: Tue Jan 22 10:45:57 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 23-Jan-85 19:33:03 EST
References: <287@boulder.UUCP>
Organization: Monmouth College, West Long Branch, NJ 07764
Lines: 11

Although it is true that the firmware in the Apple Super Serial Card
loses characters at baud rates over 300 (a fact that is mentioned in
the documentation), good terminal software can easily remedy the
problem.  I have used the SSC with an IIe at 9600 baud (with no
padding) using the program Softerm II by Softronics of Memphis
Tenn.  The software is so good that it can even run your printer
concurrently and still not lose a character.

                                     Ben Broder
                                     ..vax135!petsd!moncol!ben

Message-ID: <828@pucc-i>
Date: Tue, 22-Jan-85 10:10:47 EST
Article-I.D.: pucc-i.828
Posted: Tue Jan 22 10:10:47 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 24-Jan-85 07:04:14 EST
References: <287@boulder.UUCP>
Distribution: net
Organization: Purdue University Computing Center
Lines: 29

 >   II:  (FLAME) I have been using my IIe to communicate with our local system at
 >   1200 baud for a year now, and have had real frustrations with
 >   the slowness of the Apple Monitor. I need to pad linefeeds with
 >   three nulls to keep the monitor from dropping one to three characters
 >   at the beginning of lines. 

The "slowness of the Apple Monitor" is not the problem.  It's the Apple
hardware.

Scrolling the screen on an Apple involves moving 23x80 characters in memory.
This requires about 3700 memory references.  There isn't time to do this
in the 8.3 milliseconds that you have between characters arriving on a
1200 baud line, even if you don't bother with such things as branching
and incrementing.
  
 >   What is most irritating about this is an attitude on the part of
 >   the customer service people that if there is no currently available
 >   fix to the problem, that the problem isn't a problem, it is an
 >   undocumented feature.

It's more like a documented non-feature.  The Apple monitor does not
actively support interrupts, which are the only solution to the problem.
On the other hand, the hooks are available so that user programs can do
their own interrupt processing.  One of the reasons most terminal programs
do not do this is that most communications cards do not adhere to the
Apple standards for interrupt handling, which were established rather
late in the game.  See the Apple //e Reference Manual.
-- 
Dave Seaman			 ..!pur-ee!pucc-i:ags

Message-ID: <1347@sdcc7.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 24-Jan-85 18:18:41 EST
Article-I.D.: sdcc7.1347
Posted: Thu Jan 24 18:18:41 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 27-Jan-85 06:52:38 EST
References: <287@boulder.UUCP> <164@moncol.UUCP>
Organization: U.C. San Diego, Academic Computer Center
Lines: 7

Does anyone know how to put the Super Serial Card into Terminal mode
via Pascal 1.1.
please mail or post your solution.
					Thanks,
					T. Nguyen
					UCSD
					sdcsvax!sdcc7!ee171xak

Message-ID: <492@sftig.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 28-Jan-85 14:27:25 EST
Article-I.D.: sftig.492
Posted: Mon Jan 28 14:27:25 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 30-Jan-85 04:20:51 EST
References: <287@boulder.UUCP>
Distribution: net
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Summit, NJ
Lines: 28

 >  
 >  II:  (FLAME) I have been using my IIe to communicate with our local system at
 >  1200 baud for a year now, and have had real frustrations with
 >  the slowness of the Apple Monitor. I need to pad linefeeds with
 >  three nulls to keep the monitor from dropping one to three characters
 >  at the beginning of lines. I have been using the Apple SuperSerial
 >  card, and could find no way around the problem.
 >                    ...
 >  V. Heuring
 >  Electrical and Computer Engineering Dep't.
 >  University of Colorado - Boulder.

One possible fix to your problem is to decrease the size of the scrolling
area.  The fundamental problem is that it takes a long time for the poor little
old 6502 to scroll all those characters when it gets a line feed, and it
does not poll the Super Serial Card for incoming characters while it is
doing the scroll.  I have a *real* terminal emulator that does scrolling and
polling at the same time.  I am very happy with it.  I have it on beta
test right now, but the author may make it
available to the world sometime soon.  Because of this fact, I have not
tried out the proposed fix, but it was given to me by someone who claimed to
have gotten it from Apple Tech support.  For what that's worth.  My source
claimed that just decreasing the size of the scrolling area by 'a few' lines
did the trick at 1200 baud.  A 20 line screen that handles 1200 baud is
better than a 24 line screen that doesn't, I always say.

Rick Thomas
ihnp4!btlunix!rbt

Message-ID: <493@sftig.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 28-Jan-85 14:48:29 EST
Article-I.D.: sftig.493
Posted: Mon Jan 28 14:48:29 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 30-Jan-85 04:21:06 EST
References: <287@boulder.UUCP> <828@pucc-i>
Distribution: net
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Summit, NJ
Lines: 23

 >  It's more like a documented non-feature.  The Apple monitor does not
 >  actively support interrupts, which are the only solution to the problem.
 >  On the other hand, the hooks are available so that user programs can do
 >  their own interrupt processing.  One of the reasons most terminal programs
 >  do not do this is that most communications cards do not adhere to the
 >  Apple standards for interrupt handling, which were established rather
 >  late in the game.  See the Apple //e Reference Manual.
 >  -- 
 >  Dave Seaman			 ..!pur-ee!pucc-i:ags

In fact, the Apple Super Serial Card even does not support the protocol for
interrupt priority as written down in the //e reference manual.  However, if
you have only one interrupting card, and that is your Super Serial Card, (The
most likely competition would be a clock card, and if you have a clock card
you dont need to have the SSC interrupt, because you can ask the clock card
to interrupt once every 4 ms or so, and poll the SSC in the clock service
routine.) then the protocol is followed by default.

For what it's worth.  The above inforamtion can all be gleaned by a careful
reading of the SSC reference manual and the //e reference manual.  It's all
there, you just have to know where to look.

Rick Thomas		ihnp4!btlunix!rbt

Message-ID: <7817@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 29-Jan-85 13:22:09 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.7817
Posted: Tue Jan 29 13:22:09 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 2-Feb-85 13:24:03 EST
References: <287@boulder.UUCP> <828@pucc-i>
Distribution: net
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab
Lines: 6

 >  ... most communications cards do not adhere to the
 >  Apple standards for interrupt handling, which were established rather
 >  late in the game.

All that is needed is usually a jumper between two of the fingers
on the card's edge connector.