SB-Bus Driver On A Raspberry Pi

Once upon a time......

Yes it feels like ages ago, when I first got the idea about creating a bus system to connect multiple serial devices to one computer. I didn't even own a PC back then, it all started on an Apple ][ (clone), somewhere in the eighties. I wanted to control multiple devices and I wanted them all to be connected at the same time, so I didn't have to stand on my head behind the computer each time I wanted to control a different device. Mind you, I'm talking about centuries before the USB port even existed.

Well, to cut a long story short. The SB-Bus allows up to 125 devices to be controlled by one single computer. If you want to talk to a particular one, simply send its address over the bus and start talking. You can read more about the SB-Bus on my stie if you like the idea.
This worked very well, until I bought myself a PC. Now I had 2 computers and I still had to swap cables if I wanted to switch between either of them. That's when the SB-Bus Driver II was born. It simply had 2 serial ports and either one of the inputs could be claimed by one of the computers at a time.

I have used the SB-Bus driver II for quite a long time until my latest computers didn't have a serial interface anymore. This can easily be remedied by a simple USB-to-Serial converter of course, but that still limited the system to only 2 computers.
Then the Raspberry Pi was born, a small and very cheap computer, capable of running Linux. What if I teach the Raspberry Pi to control the SB-Bus?! Then I could control the SB-Bus from any other computer over SSH. I could even control the SB-Bus from the other end of the world if I wanted to.

That's why I created the Pi-Bus Driver. And it lived happily ever after.........