Read Me About HC11 Distribution

This distribution contains a wide variety of files related to the 68HC11 development done by the Macintosh Development group of the Department of Computer Science at The University of Western Australia. This distribution is Freeware and can be freely used for non-profit use but remains the copyright of UWA (and other organisations where noted).

Project Background

In 1994 the Macintosh Development group at the Department of Computer Science of The University of Western Australia started a project that involved porting a PC compatible based 2D to 3D inferencing system to the Macintosh. Part of this system was a computer controlled projector capable of projecting structured light patterns. On the PC this was controlled from the parallel port. Unfortunately the Macintosh doesn't have parallel ports and the serial protocol spoken by the projector was sufficiently obscure to prevent its implementation on the Macintosh's built-in serial hardware.

We addressed this problem by implementing a 68HC11 'pod' that hung off the Macintosh's serial port and accepted commands from the Macintosh through that port. The HC11 would then perform the commands, typically a sequence of pulses on its TTL level outputs, and return status information to the Macintosh.

The best thing about this system is that the HC11 is wired into 'special bootstrap mode' wherein it ignores its built-in E[E]PROM and boots from the serial port. This means that the HC11 pod is a totally general purpose IO controller, not tied to our specific project. Because of this we decided to make the specification of the system available to the public.

Files in the Distribution

The distribution contains the following items:

• Read Me About HC11 Distribution -- This read me file.
• as11 -- A MPW port of the as11 assembler, originally an PC compatible program that I found on the net. The worksheet for this project is called ProjWork and it contains the commands required to build the assembler.
• HC11 Assembly -- Some samples of HC11 assembly language, used to test the assembler.
• Documentation -- A collection of ClarisWorks documents describing various aspects of the HC11 board, its hardware and software. The folder also contains a copy of the HC11 FAQ. Most of these are in ClarisWorks 4 format, readable by that program on both PC and Macintosh.
• S19Bin -- The Macintosh C source code to a module that reads in S19 record files and converts them to binary.
• DriveHC11 -- The Macintosh C source code to a module that drives the HC11 board from the Macintosh serial port. This code will not compile 'as is' but gives a good indication of the actual hardware interface required by the HC11 board.

Credit Where Credit Due

The HC11 system is the work of a number of people, some of whom I am familiar with and some of whom are unknown to me.

I found the as11 assembler on the net. It is not my work and I can't easily find out whose it is. Thank you whoever you are. I ported it to operation under MPW myself.

The HC11 board was designed (and our instances built) by David John McKenna (aka John West) <john@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au>. My thanks to him for his help with this project.

The Macintosh C code was all written by me.

The documentation was all created by me, except for the HC11 FAQ.

Wrap Up

The department provides no support for this distribution. It's provided for your own amusement only. If you want to ask a question about it, please do, but don't expect or demand a coherent answer.

The official email address for the Macintosh Development group is <MacDev@cs.uwa.edu.au>.

I no longer work for the department and won't receive any mail you send to the above address. If you would like to contact me directly, my email address is on <my web site>.

Share and Enjoy.

Quinn "The Eskimo!"
3 Sep 1995