August 18, 2020, Tuesday

Happy Tuesday!  Sunday night brought a wild thunderstorm with high winds 
to the Dallas, TX area.  After having gone most of the month without rain, 
it was crazy to see such a big display of wind and lightning and rain.  
Thankfully, we did not sustain any damage or power outage and the cold 
front that came with the storm has lowered our temperatures somewhat.

Yesterday, I spent a few hours trying to make my Apple IIc connect to my 
Raspberry Pi using Dave Schmenk's Apple2Pi Project.  

https://schmenk.is-a-geek.com/wordpress/?p=167

Dave Schmenk is much loved among Apple II users because of his creation 
called ADT Pro that allows Apple II users to download disk images from a 
host computer connected by serial cable to the Apple II by serial cable. 
He even has developed ways to transfer the operating system to bare metal 
and write to a floppy disk.

The Apple2Pi project appears to date back to 2013 and seems to have last 
been updated in 2017.  The project was developed along with a hardware 
expansion card that went in an Apple II computer and connected physically 
or by ribbon cable to a Raspberry Pi.  The project allowed the keyboard 
and mouse of the Apple II to control the Pi.  Using the programs that run 
on both the Pi and the Apple II, the user would see the output of the Pi 
on a video monitor attached to the HDMI output of the Pi.  Dave 
demonstrated using the GSPort Apple IIGS emulator on the Pi as an added 
twist.  The documentation suggests that this approach can be used on an 
Apple IIc by connecting the Pi to either the printer port or the modem 
port by serial cable connected to a USB to serial adapter on the Pi.  

Unfortunately, I could never get the Pi and the Apple IIc to talk using 
this approach. I even re-imaged my Pi4 with a fresh Buster image and still 
could not make it work.  All is not lost, however, since I reverted back 
to my usual way of connecting the Apple IIc to the Raspberry Pi.  I use 
Proterm on the Apple IIc as the terminal interface to my serial connected 
Apple IIc and control the pi as a serial console.  The video output comes 
from the Apple IIc itself and not from the Pi.  That is how I am typing 
this post.

I don't know if the instructions are merely outdated due to advancements 
in the Pi since 2017 or if I was just doing it wrong, or some combination. 
I'm willing to give it another go if anyone has instructions specific to 
the Apple IIc. I will probably email Dave Schmenk for advice.  If you have 
any suggestions, please email me at taxman@sdf.org.

That's all for now. Stay cool and stay safe.

The Proprietor