Ports and cards

The ports on the back, connected to yours

Expansion cards fitted per machine, a serial port that reaches a real one, and a parallel port that reaches a real printer. The things a Risc PC had round the back, wired to what your own computer has.

Expansion cards

Podules, fitted per machine

ROM cards

For carrying software that expects to live in an expansion card rather than on a disc.

MIDI

AKA16, AKA12 and MIDI Max, connected to your own MIDI hardware, so a RISC OS sequencer can drive a real instrument.

The Lark sampler

Computer Concepts' sound sampler card, for the software written to expect it.

Room for more

The card interface is a plugin ABI, so adding another kind of card does not mean changing the emulator.

Serial

A real port, a file, or a modem that dials

A real serial port

A USB adapter, a built-in port or a pseudo terminal, with the speed and framing following whatever the guest programs rather than being fixed in advance.

A modem that dials the internet

A TCP mode where dialling a host and port connects to it, with a telnet layer, so RISC OS comms software can call a real telnet bulletin board.

File transfers that work

The connection is eight-bit clean, so XMODEM, YMODEM and ZMODEM transfers complete rather than corrupting part way through.

Parallel

Printing, three ways

A real printer

Print from RISC OS to a printer your own computer already has.

A PDF

A virtual printer that captures each job, with conversion to PDF in the emulator, so output can be kept and read rather than produced and lost.

Raw capture

Log exactly what the guest sent, which is what you want when the question is why a driver is producing the wrong bytes.