petwifi

An ESP8266 expansion for the Commodore PET / CBM.

Description

Unlike the C64, the Commodore PET does not have a serial port. For that reason, most serial port adapters for the C64 don't work, and an alternate interface must be found. Furthermore, the user port on the PET doesn't supply any power, so an external power supply would be necessary.

There is hope, however: The cassette port supplies 5V power and has suitable logic lines that can be used to emulate a serial port.

The drawback is that serial communication must be fully emulated in software.

Due to the different voltage levels of the ESP8266 and the PET, some voltage conversion is necessary. Luckily, this can be achieved with minimal circuitry: Converting from 5V to 3.3V can be done with a resistor divider. For the opposite direction, no conversion is necessary, because the voltage swing from 3.3V CMOS output drivers is sufficient to drive NMOS input gates.

Special care must be taken for the MOTOR control line (which is used as CTS control input on the ESP): It is driven by a darlington array on a 9V supply rail.

The other pin mappings are as follows:

PET pin	ESP pin	Direction	Cassette 1 external	Cassette 2 internal
Cassette Write	RXD	PET->ESP	VIA PB3	VIA PB3 (same as 1)
Cassette Read	TXD	ESP->PET	PIA1 CA1	VIA CB1
Cassette Motor	CTS	PET->ESP	PIA1 CB2	VIA PB4
Cassette Sense	RTS	ESP->PET	PIA1 PA4	PIA1 PA5

A suitable serial signal (RS-232-like) must be generated/decoded in software. Make sure that you don't access the cassette port 1 while the adapter is connected.

For programming info, refer to this excellent document: http://www.6502.org/users/andre/petindex/local/pet-io-2.txt

RS232 Waveform

Logic	L	H
CMOS	0V	3V
RS232	+3V	-3V
Start	+3V
End		-3V

   _   ___   ___     ____
H   | |   | |   |   |
    | |   | |   |   |
L   |_|   |_|   |___|
     S 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 E

     _     _     ___
+3  | |   | |   |   |
    | |   | |   |   |
-3 _| |___| |___|   |____
     S 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 E

PET RS232 Driver

On the software side, the RS-232 interface is realized as a loadable driver for the PET. It can be compiled for loading into RAM, or for flashing onto a ROM chip.

The driver defines four entry points:

Function	Entry point (load at $7000)	Description
rs_init	$7000	Initialize the driver and the hardware
rs_uninit	$7003	Disable the hardware interface
rs_read	$7006	Read one byte from the input buffer
rs_write	$7009	Write one byte to the output buffer

Input parameters and return values for rs_read and rs_write are exchanged via the zero page:

Variable	Address	Description
rs_available	$ed	Available bytes to read or write (size of the input buffer or remaining space in output buffer)
rs_data	$ee	Data byte (return from read or parameter for write)
rs_status	$ef	Status of the operation (0=ok, 1=read buffer empty, 2=write buffer full, 3=not initialized, 4=already initialized)

Example BASIC Program

This program assumes that the driver is already loaded at start address $7000.

10 PRINT "Initializing driver"
20 SYS (28672)
30 PRINT "Waiting for input"
40 SYS (28678)
50 status = PEEK(239)
60 IF status <> 0 THEN GOTO 90
70 char = PEEK(238)
80 PRINT CHR$(char);
90 GOTO 40
100 PRINT
110 PRINT "Disabling driver"
120 SYS (28675)
130 END

VICE Emulation

To help test the RS-232 driver, there is a patch for the Commodore computer emulator VICE in the file vice-tape-rs232.patch.

It is intended for VICE 3.6.1 and prints out decoded RS-232 transmissions from the driver to the console. Reading data into the emulator is not supported yet.

To enable the emulated device, you need to open the "Tape port" settings and select "RS-232 interface" for tape port 1.