6 Dec
2006
6 Dec
'06
8:15 a.m.
On 6 Dec 2006 at 10:46, Simon Fryer wrote:
I was thinking of doing the same sort of thing but
using compact flash
cards and building some electronics as the interface for the QIC tape
interface. Thinking about it is about as far as I got. From what I
understand, the electronics and software for interfacing Compact Flash
is a little easier than USB.
I've been toying with the idea of using a CF to provide emulation for
floppy drives. More complicated, as the thing has to look like a
floppy. Rather than record separated data, I'm inclined to record
flux transitions on the CF, so a disk would require something on the
order of 128KBytes per track (for a 300 RPM 500KHz drive). i.e.,
the drive would be data-encoding independent. Since one can get 4GB
CF cards, this shouldn't be a problem . Managing multiple images
from a single CF card will require some careful
thought. Simulating
multiple drives with a single unit is another possibility.
There are still whole segments of the industrial market where
floppies represent the only available interface for older equipment.
For the interested, here's a RS232/485-to-CF card development board.
Note that it's pretty simple, using a PIC for most functions.
http://www.futurlec.com/CompBoard_Technical.shtml
I've been using the same outfit's USB-to-parallell I/O module and
find that it's easy to use (and plugs into a 32-pin DIP socket).
Cheers,
Chuck