Subject: Re: SuperSerialCard Question!
From: dempson@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)
Date: Sun, Oct 25, 1998 19‚10P
Message-id: <1dhihs5.1pvzccsmum18cN@dempson.actrix.gen.nz>

Supertimer <supertimer@aol.com> wrote:

> While the IIGS can do 56k serial and 230k AppleTalk, the
> Super Serial Card can only do 19.2k and because of a bug in
> its hardware, that usually only works up to 9.6k on a modem.

Can you please elaborate on this "bug"?  I wasn't aware of any such
problem, other than the computer not really being able to keep up with
19200 bps without an accelerator.

The original IIc motherboard's serial ports have a hardware design flaw
which causes problems with intelligent modems, but this is not related
to the specific baud rate used.

> Thank God the IIGS got something better.  In fact, the IIGS'
> serial ports are identical to Macintosh ones.  ;-)

Not quite.  The IIgs is missing one of the external clocking options
(but still has the clock-via-CTS which is used with the Apple MIDI
interface), and is nowhere near as capable as later Mac ports, which
support 115200 bps and DMA.

The Super Serial Card does have one major advantage over the IIgs serial
ports: a full complement of flow control signals (the IIgs only has one
outgoing signal and two incoming ones, the SSC has two outgoing and
three incoming).  The tradeoff is that some of the functions of the SSC
signals are hard-wired (CTS disables transmit, DCD disables receive, RTS
disables transmit, DTR disables everything).

-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz
Snail mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand