RE: Macs and ATMs

[Alan Salmon <asalmon@mat.army.defence.gov.au>]

Has anyone thought of using those orphans of the computer world in this process. The one 
I am thinking of is suitable for running off batteries, has a fairly sophisticated 
operating system and a good set of development tools. I refer of course to the Amiga. 
Along with the Commodore VIC-20 and C64, I have a collection of these "working order" 
orphans lying around desperate for some way to live out their lives in dignity.... (but 
then again, I also have systems based on the Signetics 2650, National SC/MP, Sanyo 
MBC-550 and even a TRaSh-80 Model III - all in working order....)

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From:   Chris Westland
Sent:   Friday, 30 August 1996 7:44
To:     Dave Sopchak; atm@shore.net
Subject:        Re: Macs and ATMs

I have tried doing some mac programming to communicate with both the LX200
and the AstroMaster.  I talked at length with Joe Longo, who produces Stars
& Scopes software for the LX200 to find out how to do it.  The Mac serial
ports are a real problem ... they operate with a protocol (RS-422) that is
a superset of the RS-232 protocol.  But there must be 15 slightly differing
standards used between various models  -- and no readily available
publications to tell you what's what.  Beyond that, Apple has never had
IMHO a decent programming environment for amatuers  (like Visual Basic). 
Languages like Think C require you to know a lot about the Mac environment.
  I like the mac operating system very much ... it is still better, and
more logical than Windows 95 (though only by a small margin now).  I have
done advertising for Apple, and had always hoped they would get their act
togetther.  They have not.   They have not treated their ISVs well, and
they have never had the clear focus on world domination that has driven
Microsoft and Intel.  So ... I am writing this e-mail on a Sharp PC3060
laptop running Win95, using Internet Explorer 3.0 (which I think is better
now than Netscape 3.0).   There could be worse dictators than Gates and
Grove.

-c


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> From: Dave Sopchak <das@po.cwru.edu>
> To: atm@shore.net
> Subject: Macs and ATMs
> Date: Friday, August 30, 1996 2:04 AM
> 
> Hi there,
>          Well, it seems like we have a healthy Mac contingent here in ATM
land.
> I was wondering, why not just get a serial-parallel interface for the
RS232
> port on the mac and use that? I have a friend who used to make them for
the
> old radio shack color computers. I've done some programming for the RS232
> port on the mac, and yes, the Time Manager can let you use either
> milliseconds or (!) microseconds. Wolfgang mentioned that it isn't
powermac
> native, though, but for this purpose, I'd just try to buy an old pog
werbook
> 190 laptop to run the scope.
> 
> Let's keep this mac thread alive- I'd be interested to see what we can
come
> up with. I'm a lot more of a software guy than a hardware guy, but I do
> have connections...
> 
> 
> Dave
> 
> ___________________________________________________________
> ...and, for best supporting electrolyte, the nominees are...
> 
>