7 Dec
2006
7 Dec
'06
12:55 p.m.
Jules Richardson wrote:
My view was that the "1.0" version would have USB or similar.
C. Sullivan wrote:
That was kind-of my thinking. I would build it in a full-height 5 1/4"
form factor as well, only because the extra space would be nice and it
would be easier to have both (all three?) connector formats in the
larger frame.
Chuck:
It sounds like what you are looking for would be a microcontroller,
some Flash memory (or possibly a CF/SD/MMC/whatever slot), with a
couple of common floppy drive connectors (card-edge [5 1/4],
card-edge [8"], and the modern pin-style [for 3 1/2"]).
Basing it around the size of a stock 3.5" floppy drive, with the same
mounting points, might be nice. 8" is left as a bit more of an engineering
exercise for the reader :-)
For my money, 8" compatibility would be VERY nice, especially for CP/M
and other obsolete machines of similar vintage (TRS-80 Model II comes to
mind). It is my understanding that there isn't much difference between
5 1/4" and 8" electrically, so it might be a moot point.
so you could take (as an example) a CP/M or Apple
][ disk image
directly from the Internet, drop it on a CF card, and plug it in to
the computer in question and boot from it. Heck, while we're at it,
add a mp3 decoder chip, so we can put cassette images on it. *chuckle*
Bah, give it a wireless card and it can get its own darn images from
the Internet! ;-)
To be honest, I'd like it if the device did have a direct-link
capability to the outside world (whether it be RS232, USB, Ethernet,
parallel, SCSI, or whatever). But I'm not *that* bothered if it
doesn't; it's not that difficult to sneakernet a CF card back and
forth between the device and a modern system (except that I blew my
card reader up a couple of months back :)
IMHO: I think that having the device aware of sector, let alone
filesystem, structure is a mistake though - it just adds complexity,
increases firmware size, and can never hope to support all the systems
out there anyway. Better to make the device good at its primary job -
emulating a standard floppy drive - and leave support for more complex
things to tools that can exist on a more modern machine as and when
people feel like writing them.
Understood. My intention was to make it work well as a drop-in drive
replacement, and add the other stuff as 'enhanced' features for a 2.0
(or later) device.
If I knew anything about PIC design* I'd get to doing some messing
around with it right now... :-)
A fast PIC could do it. I was leaning more towards something a little
more sophisticated (not that a PIC can't be), if for no other reason to
support the creeping features I pointed out above. Also, the floppy
timings on GCR formats can get a bit weird. FM/MFM should be fairly
easy. Hard-sector formats might even be easier, or harder. Again, I
don't know enough about the signals to really know.
I do a lot of microcontroller crap. I'm in the middle of a move right
now (from Portland, OR to Billings, MT), so I don't have a way of
testing any theories right now.. but would definately be interested in
pursuing this as a project early in the new year once I'm settled here.
Anybody interested in starting up a mailing list specifically to start
napkin-drawing this thing? I have a listserv...