OK, so I've been working on a design for a serial<->WiFi board (there's a thread over in The Lounge inquiring about how many people might be interested in such a thing); and as I've now got a preliminary layout; I figured I should start a development thread.
At the moment; what I've got on here is an ESP-12 module; a 3.3v regulator; and an ISL83490IBZ RS422 transceiver. Connection to the Mac is by a mini-din-8 socket; it's expected that you would use a cable (such as an ImageWriter II cable) to connect the board to your Mac. Power is taken from a pair of mini-din-4 sockets, wired as an ADB pass-thru. Either an ADB keyboard cable or an S-Video cable can be used to connect the board to your Mac for power.
There are headers for programming the esp8266; and a jumper set if for reversing the connected pins in case you have a straight-thru cable instead of a crossover cable. Also, unused pins from the esp8266 are brought out to a header pad for future expansion.
Not yet done is some provision for getting +5v to the board if you don't have ADB (like, say, a Mac Plus); and hooking up the handshaking lines from the serial port to the ESP8266. Also, no firmware has been written yet; however some research into libraries and protocols has been done.
At the moment; what I've got on here is an ESP-12 module; a 3.3v regulator; and an ISL83490IBZ RS422 transceiver. Connection to the Mac is by a mini-din-8 socket; it's expected that you would use a cable (such as an ImageWriter II cable) to connect the board to your Mac. Power is taken from a pair of mini-din-4 sockets, wired as an ADB pass-thru. Either an ADB keyboard cable or an S-Video cable can be used to connect the board to your Mac for power.
There are headers for programming the esp8266; and a jumper set if for reversing the connected pins in case you have a straight-thru cable instead of a crossover cable. Also, unused pins from the esp8266 are brought out to a header pad for future expansion.
Not yet done is some provision for getting +5v to the board if you don't have ADB (like, say, a Mac Plus); and hooking up the handshaking lines from the serial port to the ESP8266. Also, no firmware has been written yet; however some research into libraries and protocols has been done.