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Connecting an Apple II and your host computer through serial ports can take several forms. This section details:
Once you have your computers connected, you can move on to bootstrapping.
The serial cable can either be straight-through or of the null modem variety; there is a jumper block on the Super Serial card that will take care of signal switching for you if you have one or the other and need to switch.
If you have a straight-through cable, set the super serial card's block to point downwards toward the word "Terminal," as in this picture:
If you have a null-modem cable, set the super serial card's block to point upwards toward the word "Modem," as in this picture:
Once ADT and ADTPro are up and running, they set the card's configuration switches through software. But to ensure trouble-free operation in the initial bootstrap step, you can set the swtiches like so:
SW1: 1001111 SW2: 1101110
Where 0 means off, down, or open, and 1 means on, up, or closed. Super Serial cards came with (at least) two different kinds of jumper blocks. One had little rocker switches, and the other had little sliders. Here are two examples with switches in the correct position for 300 baud operation:
Strapped as a terminal (arrow on the jumper block pointing downwards on the SSC card), you can connect computers with a straight-through serial cable like this:
You will need a serial cable setup that ultimately connects the round, 8-pin mini-DIN modem connector of your IIgs or IIc+ to the serial port of your host computer - and also performs a null-modem function in between.
There are two 8-pin mini-DIN connectors on the backs of IIgs and IIc+ computers. One has the icon of a telephone, the other has an icon of a printer. Be sure you are plugging into the telephone (modem) one, on the far left as you look at the back of the computer. The IIgs looks like this:
And the IIc+ looks like this:
If you are wiring a null modem yourself, the pinout to use is below. The parts you need can be found at swap meets, Jameco, Mouser, Radio Shack, etc. If you would rather purchse one that is ready to use, I sell them here. They look like this:
For the IIgs, you will first need to verify a couple of things in the control panel. You bring up the IIgs control panel with the key sequence Control-OpenApple-Escape.
One possible "frankencable" setup that connects a male DE9 serial port to the IIgs' 8-pin mini-DIN connector with a null modem in between looks like this:
These pinouts describe the round "MiniDIN8" male connector looking into the cable at the pins:
A straight-through cable, used if you connect through a null modem as pictured above, is wired like this (Apple would call this a "Modem" cable):
Apple
MiniDIN8 DE-9 DB-25 RS-232
Pin# Pin# Pin# Name
-------- ---- ----- ------
3 ----- 3 2 TxD
5 ----- 2 3 RxD
4 --,-- 5 7 GND
8 --'
2 ----- 8 5 CTS
1 --+-- 7 4 RTS
'-- 4 20 DTR
7 ----- 1 8 DCDA single-cable null-modem is wired like this (Apple would call this a "Printer" cable):
Apple
MiniDIN8 DE-9 DB-25 RS-232
Pin# Pin# Pin# Name
-------- ---- ----- ------
5 ----- 3 2 TxD
3 ----- 2 3 RxD
4 --,-- 5 7 GND
8 --'
1 ----- 8 5 CTS
2 --+-- 7 4 RTS
'-- 4 20 DTR
7 ----- 1 8 DCDYou will need a serial cable setup that ultimately connects the round, 5-pin DIN modem connector of your IIc or Laser 128 to the serial port of your host computer - and also performs a null-modem function in between.
There are two 5-pin DIN connectors on the backs of IIc and Laser 128 computers. One has the icon of a telephone, the other has an icon of a printer. Be sure you are plugging into the telephone (modem) one, on the far left as you look at the back of the IIc:
And on the Laser 128, it's on the right side of the case, but just to the left of the printer port:
If you are wiring a null-modem yourself, the following is the pinout to use. The parts you need can be found at swap meets, Jameco, Mouser, Radio Shack, etc. If you would rather purchse one that is ready to use, I sell them here. They look like this:
This pinout describes the round male connector looking into the cable at the pins. Note that this is numbered using Apple's (not DIN's!) standard:
A single-cable null-modem is wired like this (Apple would call this a "Printer" cable):
Laser/ Apple DIN-5 DE-9 DB-25 RS-232 Pin# Pin# Pin# Name ----- ---- ----- ------ 4 ----- 3 2 TxD 2 ----- 2 3 RxD 3 ----- 5 7 GND 1&5 (nc) (nc) (disables (nc) 7&8 4&5 hardware (nc) 1&4&6 6&8&20 handshaking) Within the DIN-5 shell, tie together pins: 1&5 Within the DE-9 shell, tie together pins: 1&4&6 and 7&8 Within the DB-25 shell, tie together pins: 6&8&20 and 4&5
This null modem cable ties all the handshaking lines together at the host end and at the IIc/Laser end. This effectively disables hardware handshaking.
One thing to note with Laser 128 machines: you will need to keep your hands off the keyboard while transfers are taking place. It turns out that keypresses are injected directly into the serial stream, corrupting image transfers.
There are two pinouts for a single-cable null-modem that will work with ADTPro: an "Imagewriter I" cable (one that does some amount of "hardware handshaking") and one without. The Apple IIc's hardware handshaking tends to be problematic and non-standard, so we're only discussing the non-hardware handshaking cable here. If you happen to have an Imagewriter I cable, you will need to tick the "Apple IIc w/Imagewrite Cable" checkbox in the serial config dialog box, brought up from the File->Serial Configuration menu item:
The Laser 128 will not work with the Imagewriter I cable.
Note that the original IIc motherboard is not able to operate the serial port accurately at speeds higher than 300 baud, so you may have to go really slowly if you have one of those. I have used my ROM revision '255' machine flawlessly at 115kbps, but your mileage my vary. You can check the revision of your IIc by checking memory location 64447:
Several manufacturers make different types of USB to serial adapters. These types of devices will work fine with ADTPro. I sell one that is compatible with Windows and OSX operating systems here. They look like this:
You will need to connect everything up with the right combination of cables, of course. Here is an example of a Keyspan USB-to-8-pin mini-DIN adapter connected to an IIgs:
Each manufacturer will include a software driver that will provide the "glue" between the computer and the adapter. For example, the Keyspan adapters come with a piece of software they call "Keyspan Serial Assistant:"
This software will tell you some details about the serial adapter, the name it chooses to call itself, and so on. In our case, we can see that the adapter has chosen port names like "KeySerial1," "USA28X1813P1.1," and "USA28X1813P2.2". Since this adapter happens to have two ports on it, you see suffixes of ".1" and ".2." They will correspond to whichever port (on the adapter itself) you are plugging your serial cable into.
At the ADTPro server software end, should see those names repeated in the serial configuration dialog box (which comes up with the File->Serial Configuration menu item). In Keyspan's case, you will see a prefix of "tty" and "cu" added to each port name. ADTPro seems to be able to function normally using either flavor.
Once connected, ADTPro will be able to operate normally over the USB connection, including bare metal bootstrapping operations.
Be careful - these sometimes disagree with one another: