19 Oct
2006
19 Oct
'06
1:35 p.m.
Fred Cisin wrote:
On Thu, 19 Oct 2006, Chuck Guzis wrote:
That's actually exactly where I was heading with design of such a box of
tricks for our museum. I don't want the hassle of a hard disk in there, though
- but even if I can't figure out how to graft my own boot ROM into the thing,
booting from a CF card on an IDE channel would probably do the job (I bought a
CF-IDE adapter a couple of months ago with just such a purpose in mind)
The other benefit would be that that same box could likely support other
classes of device other than floppies which used interfaces like SCSI and IDE.
My main headache is with catweasel drivers, though - the use of a CF card
probably rules out Windows (which doesn't lend itself to a headless box
anyway), but catweasel support software for non-Windows OSes looked to be
pretty thin on the ground.
cheers
Jules
If you're thinking about a Catweasel-type
external box, then I'd put
lots of memory (10 MB or more) and some programmable intelligence in
it (so the "nuts and bolts" isn't subject to OS platform-related
issues). Maybe interface with something dirt-common, like RS-232C.
Of course, this would push the price of a basic unit up pretty high.
If you don't mind it being rather bulky, . . .
just start with an old AT. Put in a lot of RAM (up to 16M on 286 or
386SX), a catweasel, a serial port, and some relatively trivial software.
The catweasel is the only part that will cost more than a burger.