At 13:53 -0700 8/11/11, Ivan Kowalenko wrote: > >The post indicates that he used a Keyspan USA-19HS for USB-Serial >communication with the VT220. Apparently it plays very nicely with his >Mac Pro running OS X Lion (10.7). Does the Classic II speak RS232 or >422?
I have a Color Classic and a Classic II here. Both have those 8 pin Mini-DIN connectors that surely support RS-422 in the same way that even older Macs did with their 9 pin DBM style connectors. The RS-422 connectors can be connected directly to RS-232 clients with easily available cables. But I haven't turned them on in years and it's possible that software might limit their capabilities. The length limit for USB depends on speed but it's designed as a desktop bus for the likes of a couple of meters maximum. RS-232 and 422 go a lot further. Modems and telephone-like pairs go for miles. A very real question, for which I have no answer, is "Does OS-X support remote login via an internal modem?". If it does an old 1200 baud modem on the Classic II wired to an internal modem on a G4 ought to work. The modems definitely do not need a telephone company in between. The question is whether or not a dial in through the modem inside of the G4 would be recognized as a login port by some manager in the UNIX-underneath. With Apple's dedication to internet security it might well have been turned off. Open BSD by itself would surely make it possible. Can the RS-422 ports of the Classics be connected directly to a USB to serial converter on a modern OS-X Mac? Of course. But will it work? I have no idea. About MPW on OS-X MPW is Apple software, copyrighted and patented to the hilt. It was very poorly received by the likes of NeXt Inc. which was bought by Apple during the bad period. Steve came back with the deal. Numerous requests have been made first to carbonize MPW and later to release the source code. Absolutely nothing has happened. Operation does depend on patches to the IO routines of the underlying operating system so that writes and reads to an open file are redirected to the MPW application rather than allowing changes to the disk files that underlie the open-for-editing document. They are not trivial. -- --> Marriage and kilo are troubled words. Turmoil results when centuries-old usage is altered in specialized jargon <--. -- ----- You received this message because you are a member of the Vintage Macs group. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/vintagemacs.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To leave this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/vintage-macs Support for older Macs: http://lowendmac.com/services/
