[Simh] Physical serial ports and SIMH

[Gregg Levine]

On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 11:24 AM, Jörg Hoppe <j_hoppe at t-online.de> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> just to ring the bell:
> For the "DECbox", we made an 4x RS232 cape for the BeagleBone.
> (www.blinkenbone.com/projects/decbox/160-decbox-about-the-beaglebone)
> A friend made an online shop for it: see shop.hachti.de
>
> regards
> Joerg
>
> Am 26.06.2013 23:28, schrieb Jordi Guillaumes i Pons:
>
>> Perhaps you will want to consider one alternative to the Raspberry Pi:
>>
>> http://beagleboard.org/Products/BeagleBone%20Black
>>
>> I have got one. It is noticeabily faster than the pi (it clocks at 1GHz
>> and uses a faster memory) and it does not need a SD card to boot (it has 2GB
>> of on-board flash). I run debian wheezy in mine, and of course simh compiles
>> without any problem once you have installed the dependencies. It comes with
>> 5 UARTs and you can get a "cape" which gets you a standard RS232 port thru a
>> D9 connector:
>>
>> http://circuitco.com/support/index.php?title=BeagleBone_RS232
>>
>> (I am not sure if you can stack several capes to use the other UARTs).
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> El 26/06/2013, a les 21:41, Gregg Levine <gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com> va
>> escriure:
>>
>>> On Wed, Jun 26, 2013 at 1:17 PM, Brian Knittel <brian at quarterbyte.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi Gregg,
>>>>
>>>> This is an interest of mine too, for some personal and some work
>>>> projects.
>>>>
>>>> The RPi usees 3.3V logic, so you have to use a level-shifting chip to
>>>> use the hardware UARTs with RS-232 or RS-4xx. I've had an RS-232/RPi
>>>> interface sitting on the dining room table half put-together for the
>>>> last 2 months, so I can't tell you yet how well it works.
>>>>
>>>> Re: the USB to RS-232 interface options (most of which, AFAIK, use the
>>>> FTDI chip built into a cable), I have read online accounts of
>>>> instability in the Raspbian drivers -- the interfaces work for a few
>>>> minutes or hours, and then stop working. If true, that makes them
>>>> functionally worthless.
>>>>
>>>> I'd be very interested to hear if anyone has had this experience, or
>>>> has found a USB/RS-232 cable/driver combo that has proven to be stable
>>>> on the RPi.
>>>>
>>>> Brian
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 26 Jun 2013 at 11:01, Gregg Levine wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hello!
>>>> Right now I am tooling up to try out an idea or two concerning the
>>>> PDP-11 emulation. This is to be run on a Raspberry Pi running the
>>>> latest release of their Raspberry specific Debian release. (Also fully
>>>> updated and upgraded.)
>>>>
>>>> The device has the two USB connections ostensibly for a keyboard and
>>>> mouse, but one gentleman I know managed to make use of the serial port
>>>> function on one of them, and attached a USB to serial adapter to one
>>>> of the connections. So obviously I can connect two adapters to the two
>>>> ports there.
>>>>
>>>> But what about the serial port embedded on the GPIO connectors? Can I
>>>> make use of that one?
>>>>
>>>> I know normally that SIMH emulates a chosen computer and only fairly
>>>> recently with some of them do communicate with the outside world via
>>>> Ethernet, but for what I'm planning and working on, it seems to be a
>>>> good fit. Should it work I might be able to upscale the working
>>>> programs to Mr Wilson's product running on an X86 board instead, or
>>>> even an actual PDP-11 model.....
>>>> -----
>>>> Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com
>>>> "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."
>>>> -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
>>>> _| _| _|  Brian Knittel
>>>> _| _| _|  Quarterbyte Systems, Inc.
>>>> _| _| _|  Tel: 1-510-559-7930
>>>> _| _| _|  http://www.quarterbyte.com
>>>
>>>
>>> Hello!
>>> Interesting point. As it happens FTDI makes a module that adds things
>>> to the based Raspberry Pi, here:
>>> http://www.ftdichip.com/Products/Modules/RPi.htm they basically there
>>> explain everything imaginable for the module itself. I suspect based
>>> on what you've stated there's still some unstability in the drivers
>>> that the modules are creating, and, ah, its supposed to be fixed using
>>> the library they describe on an app note, and of course its available
>>> for all forms of Linux.
>>>
>>> -----
>>> Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com
>>> "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Simh mailing list
>>> Simh at trailing-edge.com
>>> http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh
>>
>>
>> Jordi Guillaumes i Pons
>> jg at jordi.guillaumes.name
>> HECnet: BITXOV::JGUILLAUMES
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Hello!
Of course. Back when your ideas first surfaced, I had thought of
getting a "Snoopy" board, (Snoopy is the dog from Peanuts and is a
Beagle) but put that idea aside as I hadn't even figured out what I
wanted to do with the whole business. For right now I'm not even
close. But the logic involved in a partial breakdown of the ideas,
which are focusing on output are being tested now.

Its the PDP-11 programming that is threatening to dislodge me, I
suspect it might be partially beyond me.
-----
Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com
"This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."