3 Sep
2006
3 Sep
'06
1:46 p.m.
On Sunday 03 September 2006 04:13 pm, Philip Pemberton wrote:
Chuck Guzis wrote:
I used to think it might be worthwhile to somehow work out a plug-in (for the
cartridge port?) that would work with a standard floppy interface, though
you'd also need power for the drive as the standard c64 drive wouldn't be
able to handle it. Besides the actual interface you'd probably need an eprom
or similar.
On 9/3/2006 at 8:42 PM Philip Pemberton wrote:
What you could probably do is remove the head preamp IC and stepper motor
drivers and patch into the circuit directly. I'm not sure if that'll give
you a Shugart-type FDD interface, but it might be worth a shot (on a drive
with a truly buggered mechanism). I'm not sure you'd be able to swap it out
- isn't the head preamp on the
1541 motherboard, not a separate drive interface board?
Indeed it is. I hoped that perhaps generations of C128 hackers had found
a way around this by now. Silly me. Or you could build a new 1541 mainboard from scratch
and mod the circuit to
provide a Shugart FDD interface, which might be a bit easier. ISTR there's
some stuff on the inner workings of the 1541 on Ruud Baltissen's site,
including some info on the inner workings of the 1541 LSI controller.
What LSI controller? They have a 6502 on there, a couple of ROMs, and in
some cases a gate array chip that just replaces a bunch of LSTTL and makes it
cheaper for them to manufacture (and I have some of those on hand if anybody
needs some :-). Aside from that there's an NE592 preamp chip, and the rest
is a couple of 6522 chips and a handful of LSTTL for the interface and clock
generation and whatnot.
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin