12 Oct
2007
12 Oct
'07
11:35 a.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 12 Oct 2007 at 12:18, e.stiebler wrote:
You could. But the Tony would complain, as he doesn't like FPGAs ;-)
I was wondering about it for a while already.
Why not just take any of the old FDCs, put it with an 8051 on a board.
Make the software open source, transfer the files via V24 (or for the
weird ones, use USB). No PCI, no PC ISA, just a plain cheap board, which
is even usable with old Mac/Vaxes/whatever ...
It's been discussed before here. I wonder if the whole shebang could
be wrapped up in an FPGA. The Backpack drives pretty much did that via the
parallel port. The
unit had an FDC (National 8477), a uP and a few K of RAM. You sent
it commands to program the ports on the FDC directly, which seems to
me like the best way to go for maximum flexibility. Let the host
figure out what to do with the raw data.
Really don't understand all the talks about catweasels secrets, etc.
Just make few boards for the classiccomp group, and be done with the
subject ;-)