4 Feb
2007
4 Feb
'07
1:31 p.m.
--- Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:
On 4 Feb 2007 at 0:24, Tony Duell wrote:
t
Incidentally, I heard a news item a few days ago
that 'PC World' (a chain
of computer shops in the UK) will no longer be
selling floppy disks once
their current stocks run out. Apparently USB
sticks store more data and
> are more conveneint (well, the first is true, bu irrelevant if you only
**>> snip <<**
need to store a few kilobytes, the second is
definitely false if your
machine doesn't have a USB port).
This is bad news from a preservation standpoint.
Cheers,
Chuck
Yes, that's bad news for me too.
Whilst my Amiga's are down at present, I do
fully intend to get back to them and develop
more games/software for them.
All my stuff (so far) is only usually around
200-300KB in size. Without floppy disks I'd
have to burn them to CD, or upload them onto
the 'net (and then burn them to CD's using a
laptop - which I haven been meaning to get
for 2 years now, just for that purpose).
Whilst we won't run out of 3.5" disks just yet,
I was wondering how feasible would it be for
someone (probably fairly rich) to make
home-made disks?
Or perhaps someone would spot the hole in the
market and continue to make disks for those
of us that require them? The only problem with
that is of course, would we be buying enough
regularly (200,000 a year?) to make it worth
their time/effort/money?
I have a feeling it ain't looking good....
Regards,
Andrew D. Burton
aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk
4 Feb
4 Feb
5:24 p.m.
New subject: Floppy drive for Heathkit 3400 ?
I've been looking into various cheap / easy ways to interface a floppy drive
to various projects ( i.e. Heathkit ETA-3400 ) for a while. My current path
is pointing towards using an external USB floppy drive ( $16 USD ) and a
device from GHI Electronics called a USBwiz ( $60 USD ). This device will
let you talk to ThumbDrives, SD cards and other USB " stuff " ( supports
FAT16 and FAT32 ) through a very simple interface that a PIC chip has
enough horsepower ( computing power ) to drive, so the 6502 in the Heathkit
should be okay. I welcome the wisdom of this community as to this pursuit
before I commit hard earned dollars to said project ( or not ... ). What do
you guys think ( and yes I already know I'm lazy and should build my own
hardware .... ).
Best regards, Steven C.
5 Feb
5 Feb
1:14 p.m.
New subject: Floppy drive for Heathkit 3400 ?
Rumor has it that Steven Canning may have mentioned these words:
I've been looking into various cheap / easy ways to
interface a floppy drive
to various projects ( i.e. Heathkit ETA-3400 ) for a while. My current path
is pointing towards using an external USB floppy drive ( $16 USD ) and a
device from GHI Electronics called a USBwiz ( $60 USD ). This device will
let you talk to ThumbDrives, SD cards and other USB " stuff " ( supports
FAT16 and FAT32 )
Does that USBWiz support FAT12? That would be needed to actually deal with
floppies; otherwise, you'd have to roll your own FAT12 driver, and that
might be a touch outside the Heathkit 3400's memory capacity unless you
have the expansion board (or hacked in more memory on the system).
through a very simple interface that a PIC chip has
enough horsepower ( computing power ) to drive, so the 6502 in the Heathkit
should be okay.
If by "6502" you actually meant "6800" ;-) [1], I'd want to remind
you that
they're clocked under 1 Mhz - I think mine has a 500KHz, but my memory's
fuzzy... A lot of the PICs are clocked at 4+Mhz, IIRC; tho I've never
tinkered with the PICs, but I've built an AVR board once...
I welcome the wisdom of this community as to this
pursuit
before I commit hard earned dollars to said project ( or not ... ). What do
you guys think ( and yes I already know I'm lazy and should build my own
hardware .... ).
I'd have to ask the question: what would be the point of it (being focused
on the 3400 trainer) - the rascal's only got... uh.... 1K RAM unmodified?
What could you build to diddle with floppies that would be easier than
hacking in a UART and sending/receiving over the serial port to the PC? I
"trained" on these in college, and that was a project that we had to do -
wire up a UART on each trainer, and send/receive info between Heathkits.
If you're looking for an embedded system, would it not be easier to snag a
nice cheap CoCo2 w/64K RAM/16+K ROM and hack on it, instead of trying to
build up such a minimal piece of hardware?
Keep in mind, I *love* my Heathkit 3400... ;-) Just my thoughts...
Laterz,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger
[1] or variant - IIRC, mine has a 6802; it has a built-in timer or
somesuch... but is 6800 compatible inside and out.
--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger | A new truth in advertising slogan
SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers | for MicroSoft: "We're not the oxy...
zmerch at 30below.com | ...in oxymoron!"
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