Setting up a PC Trasporter on a IIGS

[micheledipaola]

I don't think on hardware there's gonna be any way to get EGA support. Given when the PCT came out it was surprisingly behind PC standards, although commercial PC games supported CGA and 8088s a lot later than I would've expected.

Yes I understand that hardware-wise it would be impossible to introduce such an improvement with the actual card... but maybe with the knowledge you gathered about its signals and communication, maybe someone could come up with some complementary module / PCB / Pico / whatever, doing the job? I really wish my electronics knowledge wasn't near to zero in these cases...

 

[kastegir]

Your project looks great. I had one of these, fully kitted out, back in the day. You can use the Apple 3.5 drive (the platinum one) with the PCT. That particular drive supports CGR and MFM, which is why you can use it to read PC disks on a Mac as well.
You can't use the Apple 5.25 floppy drive (any version) with it. They're completely incompatible, and may damage the board in the drive or the PCT if you try.

 

[micheledipaola]

Found a simple way to prepare disk images for the usb drive to plug in the Gotek:
Using WinImage (on Parallels with my Mac) you simply drag and drop in the window the DOS files inside the zipped directories which many abandonware files will give you as "disk images". Then you can save them as .IMA 360k 5.25" floppy disk images on the usb and read them on the Gotek plugged as disk B: in the PC Transporter.

I did this with some old games (Frogger Jr, Dynamic Basket, Transylvania etc) and they all boot and load.

I also found some abandonware repositories for DOS images, and one of them (The Old Flight Simulator Vault) has a cracked version of Flight Simulator 2.13 on a disk image - it seems that many people had trouble having this simulator running on the PC Transporter so far, but with this image on the Gotek...

 

[luvwagn]

I just got a transporter and messing with it now, following along...

 

[luvwagn]

@ushicow I pinged you on FB group, lots of nice goodies! Arigatou!

My board looks different, no zip RAM.


Need to repair the butchered db15 cable...

 

[micheledipaola]

@ushicow I pinged you on FB group, lots of nice goodies! Arigatou!

My board looks different, no zip RAM.
View attachment 78515

Need to repair the butchered db15 cable...
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I would say also the video cable is different... If you have the ColorSwitch daughter board, usually there is a male cable from the card to the IIGS video port, and then a second port on the daughter card to plug the screen to. I have never seen this female db15 cable solution.

The docs I linked in the first post show an "original" card and rev. D... maybe this is an earlier revision or something in between? try to look for some infos on the back or somewhere on the card...

 

[luvwagn]

I would say also the video cable is different... If you have the ColorSwitch daughter board, usually there is a male cable from the card to the IIGS video port, and then a second port on the daughter card to plug the screen to. I have never seen this female db15 cable solution.

That isn't a female - that's a male where the pins and metal "collar" have been torn off You can see it embedded in the rear IIgs video connector. Came that way, I didn't do it. But probably made the machine tricky to test for an amateur, which is why I got a smoking deal for it

Apparently this rev of Transporter boards migrated from ZIPs to DIPs for RAM, so my model is likely later than yours

 

[micheledipaola]

Yes it's a torn connector! Thanks to the pics on FB I finally got it

I also have another card revision with a daughter card for RAM, but I never managed to make it work... so at least 3 different models are out there.

Now how to make it work: connected video and disks seems to be needed in order for it to boot.
You will also need the card software (2 or 3 different version are out, 2.0.5 is the last one) to possibly put on a GSOS hd image somewhere, and there you will have diagnostics, setup etc. (check my older post for explanations).

A couple msdos disks / images are included to install dos and some custom utils on a msdos image. You could also use a ready made msdos disk image: there is one linked below the YouTube videos I posted previously, which also includes a Windows 3 install.

If you cant manage the card to be recognized and plan to dive into hardware check, I will be very interested to learn what you will be checking and how, since as I wrote I have another card sitting there.