Setting up a PC Trasporter on a IIGS

[micheledipaola]

Hi everybody,
I just made it to acquire the holy Grail of 16 years old me, the Applied Engineering (AE) PC Transporter card for PC compatibility on Apple IIe / IIGS.
The card I got seems to be a rev. D, looking like this:



I am setting it up in a ROM03 IIGS, and it's a learning process that I either want to share here, and look for some hint about. The card is basically an IBM PC/XT clone, heavily relying on existing hardware of the host machine for input/output activities, meaning that screen, speakers, disks will be the ones of my IIGS.
The same concept is the one behind Mac x86 cards, which have their own thread ongoing forever on the forum and recovered here after the Big Crash: https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/x86-card-revival-thread.38368/

First of all, there is a lot of documentation about the PCT (PC Transporter), so you don't start in the dark; I found this site as a great starting point:

PC Transporter

ae.applearchives.com

but more docs and software disk images are available on Internet Archive and in many other places online.

My first discovery, that made me worry as hell when I started setting up everything: if drive and video cables are not plugged in, the card seems not to work and to be recognized by the system. Once the cables are in, and the slot is mapped as "My card" in the IIGS control panel, then the PC Transporter software will recognize the card and tell you in which slot it is. I am talking about cables in plugs 4 (disk) and 6 (video out for daughter card "ColorSwitch") :




You can also use plugs 1 and 7 to connect to speakers (sound in and out);
plugs 2 and 5 are respectively for connecting the IIe keyboard, and to connect an external PC keyboard (with a din adapter which I did not get) .
Plug 3 is for composite video out (in case you don't have the ColorSwitch daugher card), while plug 8 can host an optional 8087-2 FPU chip, which I am currently waiting to get shipped to me - even if I got reports of it getting real hot and drawing a lot of power from the psu.

There seem to be many releases of the software: 1.3, 2.0.4, 2.0.5... I tried the 2.04 and the diagnostics I tried so far, allowed me to check the RAM on the card (I was lucky enough to score a card with the maximum amount of RAM, which is 768k) , and the card checksum (don't know the use for this yet).

On the software disk there is a program to map ProDOS drivers called PCINSTALL, and there I can setup the card memory as a ProDOS RAM disk, or map an Apple 3.5" disk (not a white Unidisk, only the platinum 800k drives which came with the IIGS).

As long as I understood so far, the drive mapping is one of the complicated parts of the setup; you can either plug in an Apple 3.5" drive (which I am going to do later today to test the outcomes) or even an Apple 5.25" drive (again, only the platinum ones with the DB19 plug, not the original Disk II drives with the stripe cable...) - you would need an ms-dos startup disk in there anyway, so I need to find a way to produce one... maybe a modern usb floppy drive would do, this is another test that needs to be done. I tried to put an ms-dos disk image on a FloppyEmu, but the device tells me that the disk image format is not right when it goes to read it... maybe here too, more testing is in order.

AE produced another daughter card for connecting third parts drives (including their own model), called TransDrive - a clone of this daughter card is still being produced (I found it for sale in Japan) and it seems to allow connecting the card with modern PC drive replacements, such as the GoTek devices which are massively diffused in the retro community, because they work on PC hardware and on Amiga too. GoTek basically will allow you to emulate a floppy drive using disk images on a USB thumb drive (similar concept as the Booti card for the Apple II family). I ordered a TransDrive clone from Japan, and I my plans are to test it with a GoTek device sooner or later.

I understood another way to connect third part drives could be the BlueDisk controller card, but it is discontinued and nowhere to be found, so I can only read success reports of testing it with the PCT and getting 1.4Mb and even 2.8Mb drives to work with it (and with ProDOS too!). Documentation about this German-made card is available on the Apple II Documentation Project: https://mirrors.apple2.org.za/Apple...s/SHH BlueDisk MS-DOS Floppy Disk Controller/

My first main goals now will be:

1. finding a working ms-dos boot disk in a working drive successfully connected to the card, to boot it into MS-DOS and activate the control-panel functions, allowing me to map drives on the DOS side, including possibly hard-drive images stored on my Booti card thumb drive

2. having a IIGS video connected to the ColorSwitch daughter card: this means either testing the original AppleColor monitor against it, and finally finding a replacement solution (maybe using a RGB2HDMI hat on a Raspberry, or other solutions that could eventually lead to a LCD conversion of another monitor that I have spare).

Let's see how far I can get with these, and meanwhile of course every hint and suggestion is super welcome!

 

[ScutBoy]

Oh good! I have one of these and many of the pieces, but haven't taken the time to figure it all out. This will be both a guide and a spur to action!

 

[waynestewart]

Doesn't the superdrive card work with the PC Transporter?

 

[micheledipaola]

Doesn't the superdrive card work with the PC Transporter?

I wish I had one to test it... but if you do, please share your experience

 

[micheledipaola]

Oh good! I have one of these and many of the pieces, but haven't taken the time to figure it all out. This will be both a guide and a spur to action!

So far:

I connected an Apple 3.5" drive to the card

I think the short cable to connect the IIGS video-out to the ColorSwitch daughter card has some issue, because I can't see anything once the card kicks in, so I am trying to connect two separate monitors, one to the IIGS video card (for ProDOS output) and one to the daughter card (for PC output)... and so far I could (barely) read I have a DISK READ ERROR every time I insert an ms-dos floppy

so I am still looking for a valid ms-dos disk to boot and see what happens

 

[micheledipaola]

I confirm that the screen connection seems to be the biggest issue - as usual with the IIGS.
As I wrote in previous posts, the connection cable between IIGS video-out and PCT ColorSwitch daughter card seems not to work - so I had to connect the two video ports to two different cables - and two different signal processors. Mainboard video-out went through a SCART to HDMI box (I had a IIGS to SCART cable) while ColorSwitch video-out went through a GBS8200 card that I am testing, using a custom cable that I built.
Luckily my HP LP2065 screen has 2 inputs, so I could easily switch between the two sources without having to connect a second screen.

Some pics of (early) progress:

first of all, I managed to find an (Italian) ms-dos 5.0 install/boot disk in my 3.5" floppies pile

that boot disk allowed the card to boot, so I was able to enter the PCT control panel long pressing SHIFT and meanwhile pressing and releasing 2 times CAPS LOCK (as explained in the card manual). Here is what I saw with great happiness (even if with a sh*tty B/W rendering from the GBS8200...) :



Choosing 2 I could enter the drivers control panel, which offers these choices:



Showing current configuration (4) I realized that a part of the prodos disk with the PCT software is actually mapped as a DOS "hard disk" with letter D: and almost 600kb of space:


What is more interesting here is letter C: - the main DOS hard disk mapped to an unknown prodos path and set to OFF.
I had on my Booti card thumb drive a prodos HD image (32MB) that I found online, claiming to contain a DOS + Windows 3.0 HD volume, to be used with the PCT. So I gave a shot at it, mapping /PRODOS32MB/MSDOSVOL as disk C: and rebooting from floppy. After getting to A: prompt from the floppy, I could switch to C: and DIR, to confirm that there was a WINDOWS directory on that volume. So I CDed to that directory, entered WIN and...




Other useful infos:

this is the keyboard map that can be shown from PCT control panel:



and these are other DOS peripherals actually connecting IIGS ones:



So it seems I really have either to figure out how to connect a reliable external screen, or take out the original AppleColor screen and see what happens with it.

 

[NJRoadfan]

The ColorSwitch adapter converts the TTL RGB from the CGA output to analog RGB and seemlessly switches between the IIgs and PC video. If it isn't working, the CGA output can be routed to a DB-9 header.

The DB-19 header on the card supports Apple 3.5" drives in double density mode and can read MFM 720k disks. That is in addition to the TransDrive disk drive chassis that supports both 3.5" and 5.25" PC/Shugart style drives. If you happen to have a Apple FDHD controller, it seems to work with the PC Transporter and 1.44MB MS-DOS disks for booting.

 

[micheledipaola]

The ColorSwitch adapter converts the TTL RGB from the CGA output to analog RGB and seemlessly switches between the IIgs and PC video. If it isn't working, the CGA output can be routed to a DB-9 header.

The DB-19 header on the card supports Apple 3.5" drives in double density mode and can read MFM 720k disks. That is in addition to the TransDrive disk drive chassis that supports both 3.5" and 5.25" PC/Shugart style drives. If you happen to have a Apple FDHD controller, it seems to work with the PC Transporter and 1.44MB MS-DOS disks for booting.

Hi, unfortunately no FDHD controller here... but as I wrote, a TransDrive daughter card coming soon.

the colorSwitch output seems to work, but the IIGS video-out processing / switching seems not to... I will need to look into that more.
Meanwhile I tried with two different output cables in parallel, to check the output and see if I was getting anything.

 

[micheledipaola]

Some little update, while still waiting for the TransDrive card.

First of all, you may want to watch the official PC Transporter install video, distributed on a VHS (!) together with the card and now available on Youtube:

The same user has a video showcasing how to install Windows 3 on a disk image using the card:

- check the links, because the final HD image with MSDOS 5 and Windows 3 preinstalled is linked in the description.

Now here everything seems quite functional:

the card works in slot 6 of my ROM03 as long as I set it up as YOUR CARD in control panel. No conflicts with the AppleSqueezerGS accelerator which I recently installed (as it should, since it is not using the IIGS cpu at all);

I have the Windows3 HD image with AEPC software in my usb thumbdrive connected to the Booti card, and I set up two msdos disk images (C: and D: which is the one coming on the card disk...) using the card control panel ,that you can access holding shift and meanwhile pressing caps-lock on and off for two times (very creative keystroke ) ;

in the official AEPC software, DOS disk image MSDOSVOL (which should be mounted to drive D: ) contains mouse drivers, an interesting utility called APLCLOCK that should sync the card clock with the IIGS (I guess) but I am still looking for the correct syntax. It also comes with a new DOS command called PCTQUIT.COM (which I renamed BYE.COM) which is very useful, because it closes the PC emulation and gets you back to prodos / gsos immediately and smoothly. Be sure to have it on every MS DOS disk image you mount! Also it is possible from the official AEPC disk, to create a prodos .SYSTEM file which is in fact a launcher for any MS DOS program in your images - so that you can launch it directly from prodos; another interesting feature that I still have to test;

I found an 8087 FPU coprocessor, so I installed it on the card; the only thing I noticed so far, is that it tends to get very hot, as someone had told me in advance;

now I need to find some software image to test; while I wait for the TransDrive clone to connect a GoTek, I read somewhere that WinImage ( https://www.winimage.com/ ) is able to read and write PC Transporter disk images, so I am thinking about trying it out: I would try to run some DOS game and see what happens (BUT: cga only? see below);

Windows 3 runs in REAL mode with CGA b/w graphics... but probably there is some setting to adjust or something to tweak, because the ANSI text of MSDOS is correctly displayed in colors; b/w CGA is not really a fantastic graphics detail... I tried to load an EGA driver at boot, but DOS does not find EGA hardware and so it doesn't load. Any hint here will be more than welcome.


My only real problem so far is with the ColorSwitch daughter card; the ColorSwitch video output works, but the bridge with the actual video-out from the IIGS board still doesn't - so I need to use two cables for IIGS and PCtransporter video out signals. Luckily my monitor has 2 video-in so I am just switching with a button, but I want to solve this... maybe it will work with the original Apple monitor? I need to find time to check it. Again, any hint is welcome.

 

[NJRoadfan]

CGA only supports 640x200 in black and white. There is no EGA support on that card. I wouldn't be surprised if the disk images are just raw sector dumps.

 

[cheesestraws]

Run (Free)GEM on it!

 

[micheledipaola]

Summer is coming again, and so is a bit more free time to fiddle with my machines... so I am back to this thread to add some more experiences with external drives;

first of all, I scored an Applied Engineering Transdrive unit - 5.25 drive only.
This is the original AE external drive meant to be connected to the card to read/write PC disk. The unit has two slots, and the full populated ones came with a 5.25 AND a 3.5 drives.

It comes with a db19 cable and a db19 port to connect to IIGS smartport, and daisy-chain IIGS smartport drives to it:



On Facebook another user had already posted a photo of the fully disassembled unit, which I am pasting here:



as you may notice, the standard PC floppies are connected to the box cables through small pcbs, which have these plugs:



the same Facebook user kindly sent me a close up pic of the pcb to connect the 3.5 drive:



possibly a converter, but maybe more... having no actual card, cloning it is surely beyond my capabilities, but maybe someone know something about it...

meanwhile I found these schematics: https://www.applefritter.com/appleii-box/H070_AppleIITransDriveAdaptor.htm
for an adapter which would allow to connect PC drives and Apple smartport drives to the PC Transporter.

Probably the design was improved during the years, and I could find online a guy in Japan selling this Transdrive adapter:



Basically this allows to connect to the card either PC drives (to the onboard plug + cable strip) and apple smartport drives (to the db19 port).

I am going to test it this afternoon to connect a Gotek drive to the PC Transporter and hopefully load dos disk images from there.

 

[micheledipaola]

Success! With this TransDrive adapter, I was able to read MSDOS disk images from a usb thumbdrive connected to a Gotek, using FlashFloppy firmware ( https://github.com/keirf/flashfloppy ).

Once I connected the Gotek to the TransDrive adapter and the adapter to the card, The PC Transporter setup utility (3 times shift pressed at boot....) detected and configured it as drive B: - I have to say that PC emulation is another world, so I am still struggling to find my way among different image formats, compressed images etc., and my first failed attempts were simply due to not working images, but I got to understand it only once I managed to find working ones. Also, the thumb drive must be formatted in FAT32 format.

Anyway, one more step forward towards a full understanding ad setting up of the card!

BTW I have now a second card (with the RAM expansion) and a second ColorSwitch module, which are not working / not being recognized by the AE PC Transporter software... I tried to reseat the ram and other socketed chips, with no result. Any hint?

Next goal for these weeks / months: interoperability between MS DOS and ProDOS, starting with the command line tools provided with the card to move files from/to the two different systems.

 

[micheledipaola]

Also, I may have figured out what's happening with the APLCLOCK util : it seems to have "millennium" problems, so it is not able to sync correctly with the system date, while it reads the system time with no problem. I wonder if the GSOS patches to fix millennium dates are somehow causing this.

Anyway if you manually run DOS command DATE and enter the current date with year 2024, it will stick, and then entering APLCLOCK will correctly show date and time for the DOS system as well.

 

[Forrest]

Interesting.

Seems similar to the ESP32 Softcard that was recently released https://www.tindie.com/products/cvt...sion-card-for-the-apple-ii/?pt=ac_prod_search

 

[micheledipaola]

Interesting.

Seems similar to the ESP32 Softcard that was recently released https://www.tindie.com/products/cvt...sion-card-for-the-apple-ii/?pt=ac_prod_search

Well the PC Transporter is obviously a device designed back then, and so relying on hardware and components available at that time, while the ESP32 if I understand correctly is based on new technologies (Raspberry Pico, wifi...) .

Anyway it could be that using the ESP32 card PC emulation layer, users could achieve something similar. This immediately makes me wish that a possible development team could use (and advance...) the existing PC Transporter software and drivers, as well as peripherals, using them with the ESP32 emulation layer as well..

Impossible wish?

 

[ushicow]

If you are interested in the Transdrive adapter, please contact me through the nanja.info Facebook group.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/nanja.info

 

[Arbee]

qkumba (Peter Ferrie) and I have been slowly reverse-engineering how the PC Transporter talks to the host Apple II and vice-versa. Everything will of course be documented in the MAME source as we get it running, and I'll probably put up a wiki article too.

Hopefully that would allow someone to write new software. The x86 BIOS is uploaded by the Apple, so all of the firmware is fair game too.

 

[micheledipaola]

qkumba (Peter Ferrie) and I have been slowly reverse-engineering how the PC Transporter talks to the host Apple II and vice-versa. Everything will of course be documented in the MAME source as we get it running, and I'll probably put up a wiki article too.

Hopefully that would allow someone to write new software. The x86 BIOS is uploaded by the Apple, so all of the firmware is fair game too.

This is great news! Please post article's links here in this thread too @Arbee once published - what you mentioned is far beyond my skills so I cannot offer to contribute, but if any kind of beta testing or similar should be needed, I would be glad to help.

Meanwhile... can I start dreaming? EGA support for instance? I wonder if anyone could pick up such a task

 

[Arbee]

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.