HP-IB, Amigo/cs80 was Re: hp 9153 floppy & disk

So would I (is that thw oen with an SPI-like interface?). But another list member mentioned making a device using IDE hard disks, and I was commenting that if such a device was created, it could also use CF cards with little, if any, modification. Why would you want to use a CPLD/FPGA here? It's another chip, it's another chip that has to be programmed (and for which you need the development tools [1] and a machine to run them on), and it doesn't give you anyting. Using just about any microcontroller, you can bit-bang the HPIB handshake plenty fast enough. [1] And unlike most microcontroollers, you have to use the proprietary tools, you can't write your own. I suspect that with a sensible choice of microcntroller, it could be built in 4 or 5 chips (microcontroller, a couple of HPIB buffers, the minimal logic needed to support a banged HPIB handshake and maybe buffers to the flash memroy device). Now if I was designing this for myself, I can assure you I'd use a microprocessor, separate ROM and RAM, some kind of HPIB controller chip (HP used the Intel 8291 in most of their drive units), and whatever chips were needed to link up the flash memory device. And of course a pile of TTL for clocks, reset, address decoding, etc. The reason is that it would be easier for me to debug the firmware in a setup like that (I could use an EPROM emulaotr, I could also use a logic analyser to trace the code as it was running). Problem is, nobody would want to build that, so I feel a single-chip miocrocontroller + buffers is probably the most senible solution. Indeed... The problem with BGAs is that they're alomost impossible to prototype with, and not many people have the setup to solder them onto a PCB anyway (I don't). So who is going to be able to actually build the thing? Oh yes, I'd want to solder the PCBs myself. That way I know they're soldeed with 'real' solder... [...] My (serious) approach too. One chip + buffers (to HPIB) + the flash memory device. And since you really need that chip to be a processor (you try doing the CS/80 protocol in random logic ;-)),, it makes more sense to use a microcontroller than an FPGA here (yes, I know you _can_ make a processor in an FPGA, I've done it, but it's not the sensible thing to use hree). -tony