From: joe@user.com   
      
   "James"  wrote in message news:46BE0B98.8030705@9b01.com...   
   >   
   > I've been away from hardware for ... awhile now but it should not be a   
   > big trick to take one of todays serial chips and adapt some interface   
   > circuitry to match the expansion connector on the rear of the EI.  Also   
   > running LDOS5.1 rather than TRSDOS would give more versatility to the   
   > setup.  TRSDOS was very limited which is why Multidos, Dosplus, Newdos80   
   > & LDOS found such a ready market.  I ran all but Multidos back then and   
   > settled on LDOS with a Lobo interface in place of the Tandy EI.  I also   
   > made a CMOS adapter card that let me run 1 SSDD 80 track drive & 7 DSDD   
   > 80 track drives on the same Lobo interface.  What fun it was.   
   >   
   > James   
      
   Well, yeah.  The boards were simple.  For their day.  It wouldn't be hard at   
   all   
   to fabricate all kinds of stuff.  Especially for the 'tab' on the bottom of   
   the   
   Model III.  I did a clock that worked there, or on the Model II HDC.  Then   
   built a small adapter that allowed the T2K mouse/clock board to work there,   
   as well as the Model III/4.   
      
   You could do a nice serial interface that would be fairly simple with an   
   8250   
   chip.  But the problem would be you'd have to write your own software for   
   the thing.  If I remember right, most of the software from back then did   
   it's   
   own hardware I/O, which means you couldn't write a small hw driver and   
   then run all the popular software.   
      
   It's too bad too, as the original plans were for the Model 1 to have 2   
   serial   
   ports, even though Tandy only ever built one...   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)