[cctalk] Re: Omnibus to USB - still some boards left!

As a point of philosophy (or maybe practicality!) the external "boat anchor" is the first thing to get chopped up, lost, damaged, destroyed, rusted-out, whatever. The controller on the legacy system is much more survivable. In consequence we get the mismatch between "I have a controller" and "I have a drive" (separate from the issue of "I have a *working* drive" ...). Emulating the controller-protocol (over modern removable media) meets this real-world gap. And as Ethan points out, it's portable across system-buses (*e.g*., PosiBus, Omnibus, Unibus, QBus). Emulating the controller-on-the-bus avoids rewriting system drivers, sure. And this is what Philipp has done to great advantage in his recent work :->. And I completely agree that this is a good thing. And I'd support more of this good-thing if Philipp decides to do so for the drives that I mentioned. It's just a different thing. And it's system-bus-specific. And I think that many folks would prefer board-level removable media (that's portable to a PC -- Linux and/or DOS/Win) rather than a PC-tether :->. Then there's the rewrite-drivers for new-hardware-with-arbitrary-protocol approach. Not what we're talking 'bout here. All of these have their pros-n-cons. Apparently Philipp is blessed to have lots of functional drives at his "disposal" -- but maybe not controllers? Many/most of the rest of us are perhaps in the boat of controllers-without-drives (and it appears, varying-bus systems). And some have neither ... I think that an economics-based case can be made for the portable-across-system-buses approach ("emulate the cable to the boat anchor"). I'm surprised that there doesn't seem to be more work along those lines. Maybe I'm just looking in the wrong place(s)? On Sat, May 18, 2013 at 6:36 PM, Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> wrote: