3 Nov
2013
3 Nov
'13
3:39 p.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-
bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Mark J. Blair
Sent: 03 November 2013 18:20
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: Looking for a MicroController Recommedation
I'm amazed by how many folks independently come up with the same
approaches after mulling over things like this. Many of the ideas already
bounced around in this thread are very, very similar to what I've been
mulling
over myself.
Personally, I'd use an FPGA to do anything timing-sensitive. I'm probably
biased to think that way since I'm a hardware guy with FPGA experience, so
it's just what comes naturally to me. I've considered various things to
give the
FPGA some intelligence, including STM32F series
processors, Raspberry Pi
boards, etc., but most recently I settled on the idea of using a
BeagleBone
Black with my own FGPA-based board sandwiched between
it and a small
LCD cape. My imaginary hardware would be applied towards both interfacing
to physical drives to copy vintage media and write downloaded images to
blank media, and replacing physical drives with a hardware emulation. In
the
latter case, the LCD would provide a user interface
for choosing media
images and so forth.
I may or may not ever get around to beginning a never-to-be-finished
project to implement this, but it sounds like I'll have plenty of company
either way!
--
Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net>
http://www.nf6x.net/
BeagleBone is certainly looking like a good candidate. If I need to
supplement with a FPGA, what is the smallest/cheapest development board
option? DE0-Nano seems to be the cheapest I have found so far.
Regards
Rob