Do you remember the Fischertechnik robot arm mentioned on the Werner Lidner thread
here and
here?
Some time ago I got a cheap Fischertechnik Interface from Ebay because, being the connection maniac I am, wanted to replicate the experiment shown.
I still have not put it on use, in part due to the lack of a robot arm, and in part because there is a lot of information on Internet but it has to be hunted on non English pages about interfacing other computers, like C64, Atari ST, Apple II, Amiga, CPC/Schneider, BBC and more.
This all has just changed Yesterday when I have found the very same robot arm on an Ebay bid. I will receive it on January, but buying it has pushed me to search the needed information.
Fischertechnik released all over of some years several variations of the Centronics/printer port interface(you can see some of them
here). I think that all of them can be interfaced to the Enterprise, because only the first 0-5 data bits for output, and the /READY signal for input, are used in the protocol.
There are older computers like the C64 or Apple II that interface different because they lack a /READY signal on their printer ports.
Almost all the different interfaces have a flat cable with an aerial 20 pin DIL female connector like the one seen on the above picture, where the provided adapter for every computer is plugged. Of course we have to make ourselves the Enterprise adapter, but it is not so difficult if we have the information:
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(Remember, on the flat cable the red lead mark the pin 20 of the connector)
Ok, now let's think that the Enterprise is correctly connected to the interface and it to the robot arm(pdf manual attached). We could play with the software provided by Werner, but he said that it was a limited version based on a PC Pascal program compiled on IS-DOS(CP/M).
I think we don't need to limit ourselves because, on the Robot Arm manual(pages 57-60), we have a wonderful Z80 machine code listing with all the options, and also some examples of CPC Basic listings that can be easily transcripted to IS-Basic. We only have to adapt the CPC Z80 ports dedicated to the parallel port to the very similar Enterprise ports.
CPCs use 16bit port EF00h to output the data bits, and bit 6 on port F500h for the BUSY signal(contrary to /READY). On the Enterprise we use the 8 bit port B6h for the output data bits and bit 3 of the B6h port for input the /READY signal. Only left us to know if a 1 on the CPC ports is a 1 on the Enterprise ports or on the contrary a 0.
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Fischertechnik manuals.