Longer explanation:
So the latest shifter arrived and I had hoped that it would take care of the communications problems. It didn't. It did loop back the RTS/CTS and DTR/DSR lines on the RS-232 side, so I could use a normal cable instead of the Frankenstein cable I created (one less thing to go wrong).
I had hoped that the shifter would handle all the flow control, but no. I still believe that this is the real root of the problem.
I created a test program, dusting off my memory banks and programming in BASIC for a bit. I was able to send commands to the Arduino and validate that I was getting the correct response back. I was. No problems.
So why didn't it work with TS-DOS? Someone very nicely posted an annotated dump of the TS-DOS program. So I went through that looking for a smoking gun. Keep in mind that all the debugging that I did so far showed that I sent the correct responses for the commands, but still TS-DOS treated my device as something else.
After looking through the code, I see where it determines what device it hooked up. The short answer is that it looks like my T102 doesn't get a response for one of the commands. TS-DOS then shifts down to 9600, at which point communications no longer works - because the Arduino wants 19,200.
I did try setting my communications to 9600 and I got farther, but it still wouldn't work correctly. It looks like data was getting dropped sending to the T102.
I can't see why TS-DOS doesn't think there is something there. My BASIC program works just fine, sending and receiving data. So it's not hardware. It's software, but where? I have no idea.
So I declare this project Failed.
My options are:
- Use a Raspberry PI instead. Then I can use the USB-Serial cable that works with dlplus on my Linux systems.
- Create my own version of TS-DOS that just uses the serial ports to communicate - since I know that I can make that work.
Neither seem worth while to me right now, since my T102 is only a hobby. So I think I'll put this aside for a while.
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