Owner's manual

which gives a response from one Smart Brick Brain, and then a
command which gives a response from a second Smart Brick
Brain before the first has finished, then the two may try and out-
put data at the same time. This won't cause any damage, but
may result in garbled data at the receiver.
It is also possible to overload the Smart Brick System with too
many commands through the serial port. You don't want to take
too much time away from the Smart Brick Brain to service the seri-
al port.
To communicate with the Smart Brick System through the seri-
al port, you can use just about any computer or terminal which
has a serial port on it. Most modern computer designs, like the
Apple Macintosh, come with serial ports which are directly com-
patible with the RS-422 / RS-485 signal levels the Smart Brick
System wants to see. These signal levels are close enough to be
used with the RS-232 signal levels found on most old-fashioned
computers (like IBMs and compatibles) with only a simple
adapter cable, so long as the wire isn't too long and you don’t
have too many devices on the same line. To gain the full advan-
tage of the RS-422 / RS-485 signal levels you will need to use a
signal level adapter.
If you are using a computer as a terminal you will need to run
a modem or terminal emulation program. Virtually any one
should work. These will send everything you type on the keyboard
out the serial port on your computer while printing on the screen
anything which comes in from the Smart Brick Brain through the
serial port. A modem program will usually have the advantage
over a terminal emulation program in that it will allow you to save
data to your computer's disk drives and then send it back to the
audio system at a later date. The Smart Brick System uses no
screen control codes or ESCape sequences, so it will work on any
machine with a 80 column by twenty-four line display. Machines
with other display formats will also work, but may not look so neat
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