I do have a defective nighthawk if you want to try your luck on it.. (off-list) And two 9153's in service witch I keep. -Rik

As I remember well it's not making enough speed (revs) at startup. -Rik

And that is confirmed, the problem with the disc is not making enough speed at startup to intialize the controller. The colder the envirement the bigger the problem, warming the disc would make it start some times, I had a spare so I changed it. And now is this one 'Going to America'. -Rik

I figured some one on this list would find this useful. http://numist.net/post/2010/project-typewriter.html

I think they did. I have a 'typewriter' somewhere that's a wide-carriage version of that little Alps 4-colour plotter (you know, the one that everybody used in the mid 1980s -- Tandy CGP115, Commodore 1520, etc). It has a Centronice posrt on the side and takes the same commands as said plotters. I also haev a little box in my pile of oddments that cotnains a microcontroller, has a Cntronics socket on one side and a ribbob cable ending in an adge connector coming out of it). On top is a swtich marked something like 'typewirter/computer' I assume it's an interface for some modle of electornic typewriter to turn it into a printer. I am not so sure. I would have thought you didn't want too much intellegence i nthe machine to get in the way. -tony

Olympia ES101, etc. Daisy wheel typewriters with centronics port. Rochester Dynatyper KGS-80 were boxes of solenoids that sat on top of the keyboard, and pressed the keys. They would work for almost anything that had a relatively "normal" keyboard, even a Merganthaler from Hell! One had a Centronics compatible interface (34 pin card-edge connector to fit with TRS80 Model I LPT port), crimping an IDC 36 pin Blue Ribbon connector on its cable was sufficient to interface it to a 5150 parallel port. It worked well with PC-Write. The other had a double-ended board that fit Apple][ slots and/or TRS80 expansion port. It worked OK with Electric Pencil and Scripsit. Escon? in Walnut Creek made a kit for butchering Selectrics. It fit on the bottom and pulled keys down as needed. At the West Coast Computer Faire (one of the earlier ones, maybe #4 - #6), somebody demo'ed a unit that worked on almost any typewriter (they demo'ed with a MANUAL PORTABLE). It connected up all over the typewriter with fishing wire. The crowd seemed to like it, and applauded vigorously every time that it successfully completed a Carriage Return. At the Third? West Coast Computer Faire (LA?), somebody presented a "paper"proposing a $50 typewriter interface. But, it was all speculation on what the toy companies COULD DO, if they wanted to. It was NOT on a par with the paper by George Morrow and Howard Fullmer about standardization of S100. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

Al Kossow wrote: So, if I would make the hardware, how many people are interested in a box which emulates HP-IB, Amigo/cs80 ? If the source would be open, is SourceForge the best way to do it ? Or are people just downloading it, without working/helping out ? Cheers

And of cause I'm interested too.. -Rik

That would seem to be a good idea. I would suggest that the HPIB interface be buffered (using either the 75160/1/2 series of chips, which would use 2 devices, or 4 off 3448 or similar.). As I mentiond a few weeks back it is a lot easier to replace a buffer chip than a microcontorller iff something goes wrong). There should be no broblem with 'banging' the handshake on microcontroller port lines. HP haev been known to do this. IIRC you need a very small maount of external logic (let me check) to ensure one signal changes fast enough. It's only a couple of TTL chips, though (and common ones, like 74x00), not really worth putting in a PLD. HPIB would take 16 port lines of the microcontroller + 2 or 3 to control the buffer driection. And then you need however many port lines it takes to talk to the flash memroy device. As regards code size, IIEC, the HP9133H (SS/80 protocol) has 16K of 6809 conde in it. That should give you some idea as to the complexity. The Commodore and HP command sets are very different. The major difference is that Commodore drives are file-oriented devices (you open a file by name, you can get a directory, etc), while HP devices are block oriented (you ask to read a particular block on the disk, the host OD reads the appropratie blocks to read the directory, then finds the blocks that comprise the file you want, and reads those, etc). Yes, I know the Commodore drives let you read disks at hte block level, but most of the time you didn't do that. H -tony

And HP set-ups might have even more devices (HP made a lot of nice HPIB peripehrals, the 5930x series, for example). I can't comment on the cont, I've not bought these chips for many years. I remember seeing the 75160 listed by, IIRC, Digikey recently, so I guess it's still easily avaialble. The difference is hat the 7516x devices contain 8 buffers. The 75160 has a common dirextion line, and is usd for the 8 data lines. The 75161 has direction control set up so the buffer can be used in a device, or, IIRC as the system controller, but not as a 'second' controller. The 75162 can operate in all 3 ways, A 75161 should eb enough for the disk emulator, but the 75162 might be easier to find. The 3448, etc, contain 4 buffers. 4 of them can be used as a device, controller, or system controller interface. You may need a little external logic 9or exra port pins) so as to get DAV and NRFD/NDAC going in oposite directions. Exactly. If /when we get to this stage in the design I will see what HP did in soem of their software-implemented HPIB units. 40 pin microcontorllers may have 32 port lines (4 8 bit ports) IIRC. That should eb easily enough -- 8 data lines for HPIB, 8 control lines for HPIB and 3 driection cotnrol ines would still leave 11 lines free. IIRC some of the flash memory card things have an SPI-like serial interfacewhich needs 3 or 4 lines. I would prefer a microcontroller that could be socketed (DIP or PLCC, possibly) since it's easier to hand-wire the prototype board. But it's not essential. I suspect that 6809 code is a bit more efficient than many microcontroller codes. But these days memory space is probably not a major problem. HP have all sorts of indentification, status, etc, commands. It's not a totally trivial command set to implement. You need to hunt through some of the manuals on hpmuseum.net. If I have time I'll see if I can identify manuals that document the 3 main command sets. Oh sure. I was thinking of rthe average user, loading and saving BASIC programs, etc. I would agree. -tony

IIRC, the interface to a CF card is essentially IDE, so you could use non-rotating memory if you wanted to. Or you could use a microprocssor rather than a microcontroller with external ROM and RAM chips. Then hange the iDE drive off the bus as was origianlly intended, and connect up an HPIB controller chip or a parallel port chip to bang out the HPIB protocol. It puts the chip count right up, but it means the only programmed drvice is the firmware EPROM (which is easy to provgram)m and it's a lot easier to debug the firmware (you can use a logic analyser on the processor bus). Yes, that's the problem. Most of the traditional HPIB interface chips have long beend discontinued. And ehile you might be able to fet them for repair purposed, I'd rahter not such a device in a new design. Why do you need 2 mircoprocessors? The HPIB low-level protocol is simple enough that it could easily be handled by whatever chip is running the main software The problem is that the AVR needs to be programmed, It's a lot easier to replace a DIL packaged IC (particularly if you put it in a socket) than have to program a new AVR and plug it in. I am also not sure (I would have to check) if the AVR (or any other mcirocontoller) poer pins meet the specs for driving/sensing an HPIB line. I doubt it. I don't think an AVR on its own would be able to respond to the states of the host-interface address/data/control lines quickly enough. You'd need some hardware to provide the actually 'registers'. OK, it could be a CPLD or something, but this makes things ever more complicated. If you're goign to use CPLDs of FPGAs, you might as well make the entire HPIB interface in one and not use the AVR at all. -tony

So would I (is that thw oen with an SPI-like interface?). But another list member mentioned making a device using IDE hard disks, and I was commenting that if such a device was created, it could also use CF cards with little, if any, modification. Why would you want to use a CPLD/FPGA here? It's another chip, it's another chip that has to be programmed (and for which you need the development tools [1] and a machine to run them on), and it doesn't give you anyting. Using just about any microcontroller, you can bit-bang the HPIB handshake plenty fast enough. [1] And unlike most microcontroollers, you have to use the proprietary tools, you can't write your own. I suspect that with a sensible choice of microcntroller, it could be built in 4 or 5 chips (microcontroller, a couple of HPIB buffers, the minimal logic needed to support a banged HPIB handshake and maybe buffers to the flash memroy device). Now if I was designing this for myself, I can assure you I'd use a microprocessor, separate ROM and RAM, some kind of HPIB controller chip (HP used the Intel 8291 in most of their drive units), and whatever chips were needed to link up the flash memory device. And of course a pile of TTL for clocks, reset, address decoding, etc. The reason is that it would be easier for me to debug the firmware in a setup like that (I could use an EPROM emulaotr, I could also use a logic analyser to trace the code as it was running). Problem is, nobody would want to build that, so I feel a single-chip miocrocontroller + buffers is probably the most senible solution. Indeed... The problem with BGAs is that they're alomost impossible to prototype with, and not many people have the setup to solder them onto a PCB anyway (I don't). So who is going to be able to actually build the thing? Oh yes, I'd want to solder the PCBs myself. That way I know they're soldeed with 'real' solder... [...] My (serious) approach too. One chip + buffers (to HPIB) + the flash memory device. And since you really need that chip to be a processor (you try doing the CS/80 protocol in random logic ;-)),, it makes more sense to use a microcontroller than an FPGA here (yes, I know you _can_ make a processor in an FPGA, I've done it, but it's not the sensible thing to use hree). -tony

I don't think you could fit all the logic to implement CS/80 or Amigo protocol in any sensible FPGA. I think it can be done in a modern microcontroller. In any case 'I have a board with the chip on' is IMHO a ridiculous reason for picking a particular clase of device. Given that the microcontroller solution should be only 4 or 5 devices, and that I would press for these to be in 'prototypable packages' (DIL, PLCC, etc), I would think you could hand-wire the hardware in an hour or so. -tony

And yet only the other day people were telling me how cheap it was to get the development setup for CPLDs, FPGAs, microcontrollers, etc. You can't have it both ways :-) More seriously, the setup for microcontrollers should be pretty simple. Most of the modern ones seem to have an in-system-programming interface, normally similar to SPI. That can be bit-banged over the lines of a parallel port. The software is free if you have somethign to run it on (and I suspect any machien capable of running FPGA development software can run microocntroller development software too), or in the case of microcontrollers yoy can write your own. As regards the actual hardware. as I said, you can hand-wire the microcontroller, clock crystal, HPIB buffers, etc on a bit of square-pad board in an hour or so. -tony

On Mon, 15 Feb 2010, Dave McGuire wrote: Check out http://www.arduino.cc g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.simpits.org/geneb - The Me-109F/X Project ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_!

On Mon, 15 Feb 2010, Dave McGuire wrote: They're ready-made boards that aren't in an application specific chassis. :) g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.simpits.org/geneb - The Me-109F/X Project ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_!

With reference to Arudinos, someone wrote: I never could see the point to those. It's much easier just build up your device using the bare chip. If one of the big AVRs, such as one of the XMegas, it might make some sense in helping to deal with handling an SMT package, sort of the way the ARM stamps do. --Chuck

I am missing something here. The purpose of a microcontroller is to control something. You have to build an interface between the microcontroller and whatever it is goign to control. And like it or not, building that interface is going to involve some soldering. I can see the point of evaluation boards to see if the microocontroller/FPGA/whatever is going to be useful (although it's often a lot cheaper and more educational just to buy the chips and solder up an evaluation board that has the features you need). I don't see this problem with soldering. Soft soldering is not difficult. I must have taught dozens of people to solder over the years, and every single one of them could solder well enough to use a microcontroller. It's a skil ltaht takes an afternoon at most to learn. Since most electronic components are joined by soldered conneections, I regard it as a fundamental skill needed to do amateur electronics. Period. -tony

Jim Brain wrote: And I think that the majority of hobbyists and beginners are doing exactly this: proof of concept, prototypes, and so on. I don't think any of them think of this way as the "perfect professional solution" or consider themselves designing real products. These aren't commercial products! But this is way to get stuff done. I give kudos to the people who are actually getting stuff done instead of simply talking about doing it "the right way." Good PCB design is hard to do for hobbyist. There is essentially no DECENT free software. Eagle is the closest, but then they have the limitation of 2" x 2"(or something) boards on the free version. So you take people NEW to PCBs and you place arbitrary limits which makes it even harder for them to succeed. You can never find a stinkin' library that contains your exact part, and so you have to create your own, but then you can't find the specs you need to create it --- don't know what size to make the pads, don't understand the variety of terminology. And none of the software is user friendly. And if you use ExpressPCB or the like, then the software is somewhat easier, but now you're forced to basically over-pay for a design that probably won't work the first time anyways. I've spent lots of time, energy, trying to design a small PCB for one of my projects, and I haven't come any closer. And as the speed of the devices increase, and the pin density increases, and through-hole devices disappear, these problems get bigger. And forget about the stinky and potentially dangerous etchants, laser printers, iron on transfers, etc etc. About solderless breadboards: for many of these projects, one isn't doing anything that requires anything better. So who cares about the tolerances involved? These aren't 250mhz designs. And the new modules encapsulate all the complex stuff and present a simple, clean, tolerant interface. I think sparkfun's idea make sense. Take immediately useful parts, keep them in stock, ship same day. Forget minimum orders, forget sample orders that arrive slow-boat-from-china, forget trying to select the "right part" from the 290384293409 models on newark, digi-key, etc. Have high quality pictures online so that you can see what darn connectors they have. Not line drawings labeled A-ZZ that never picture the exact model you need. It's clean, easy, fast. That's why I like it. Everyone understands you are paying a premium for convenience, but then I can't solder (or don't want to solder) small pitch (high pitch?) smt devices anyway. I think it's also useful to remember that there is no cost multiplier on these designs. Since 92384 of them aren't being built, only one or two, it doesn't matter if the microcontroller costs $2.50 each or $20 each. Yeah, so your design costs $50 instead of $10. Who cares? Keith

On 17 Feb 2010 at 19:27, Tony Duell wrote: If it's a board of any scale (8+ ICs), I prefer to wire-wrap it myself. I start with one-sided FR4 0.060 PCB blank, drill it for pins, and run a bare +Vcc bus on the non-copper side of the board. Gives me a great ground plane and is easy to rework. --Chuck

On 17 Feb 2010 at 21:04, Tony Duell wrote: I don't bother with sockets. I use the push-in socket pins scavenged from old prototyping boards. One good-sized board will keep you in pins for a very long time. If I'm using a PLCC package, I take a standard through-hole PLCC socket and push the socket tails into the wire-wrap pin sockets. A bit of glue holds it fast to the PCB. The downside is that the gold bugs see all those shiny pins and want to scavenge them for metal content, so they're getting harder to find. --Chuck

On 2/17/2010 9:13 PM, Dave McGuire wrote: I sure would like to know what one needs to smoke to agree with this :-) I tried gEDA (includes PCB). Concerning PCB: * Can't find a Windows version that works. A few builds are available, but they are less than usable on Windows. So, I had to install on the Linux box. Linux is viable as a platform, but a lot of entries into this space are on Windows. * IMHO UI is very non-intuitive (that's saying something from a guy who learned the EAGLE UI) * Changing options (trace width, etc.) much more cumbersome * Could not find ability to change package for part already on board. * I assume there is a way to select all elements in a drawn bounding box, but could not find it * Could not find a way to put rounded edges on polygons, like ground and VCC pours. * integration between gschem and PCB. If PCB is better than all the 5 digit PCB CAD SW, then I shudder. I am sure all of these things are surmountable, but I am not sure PCB is a good choice for someone starting out in PCB design. I'm not sure I'd recommend EAGLE, since it has the non intuitive UI, but there is FreePCB, TinyCAD, ZenitPCB (http://www.olimex.com/pcb/dtools.html) for the Windows crowd, and KiCAD looked credible for the Windows or Linux crowd. I'll grant that PCB is extremely powerful, but I asked a designer to work on a small board in gschem/pcb for me and I did a comparable design in EAGLE. The designer has 10 years experience using gschem/pcb, and it took twice as long to do the design as my EAGLE effort.. We're both about the same skill level in design, it was a 2 layer board, 10 components. I think one of the other options is a better choice (KiCAD is OSS-compliant, if that's a requirement for the user) Jim -- Jim Brain, Brain Innovations (X) brain at jbrain.com Dabbling in WWW, Embedded Systems, Old CBM computers, and Good Times! Home: http://www.jbrain.com

On 2/17/2010 10:35 PM, Dave McGuire wrote: I don't have an issue with the heritage or the target audience. I do, though, struggle with suggesting it as an alternative to EAGLE (which has UNIX and Windows versions). Dunno, I find EAGLE very powerful, and less of a learning curve. KiCAD looks to also be less of a learning curve. I installed the RPMs from the gEDA Download page last week. I tried all of the things in my email immediately prior to writing the message. Changing an existing trace. Just tried it on v20081129 (the latest gEDA install on the page) in select mode. It keeps wanting to grab the first item it snaps to. It's very useful to make wide sloping power traces for expansion boards. I know, and I know they have come SO far since that time (I first tried the SW about 5 years ago, for a few minutes). I am trying to not be critical of the work they have invested in it. Unfortunately, while they are busy getting the UI up to people's expectations, the expectations are fast moving forward. I am also sure it is hard to make a nice UI for what is a very complex process. Still, for newbies, I am just not sure PCB is the path I would recommend. Truly, as much as I loathe the tie-in of ExpressPCB to their PCB fabrication business, I'd probably recommend it if EAGLE was not an option, at least for the initial trials of a newbie user. Jim -- Jim Brain, Brain Innovations (X) brain at jbrain.com Dabbling in WWW, Embedded Systems, Old CBM computers, and Good Times! Home: http://www.jbrain.com

On 2/17/2010 11:10 PM, Dave McGuire wrote: Ah, it makes more sense now. That puts me in a bit of a quandary. I am just *NOT* grokking PCB at present. maybe I'm just too comfortable with EAGLE. But, I am ready to start laying out more complex boards, so I need to make a decision here at some point on the direction I should go. TO tie all of this together and relate to the list topic: Lots of people are asking for vintage PC peripherals and integration with contemporary stuff, but the only way to implement some of these designs is via CPLD and/or FPGA, and making all of that fit in some of the required spaces will mean 4 layer boards and lots of fine pitch work. It's OK, and I'm game to learn FPGAs and more complex layout, but I have got to be efficient about this. I thought I'd just grab the source and compile it a few minutes ago before I last replied, but I can't easily see a link to the tarball or a repo to snarf the latest and compile. Links would be appreciated, as I would really like to seriously consider PCB and/or KiCAD for larger board work. Yeah, I found it under "Select" That is a shame. I don't want to have to subscribe or troll the list just to know where the latest source tree is. I'm thinking the young whippersnappers like me, who are used to right click context menus, click and drag everything, toolbars and cute icon buttons on the left/right/top/etc. You know, the spoiled brats of this hobby :-) (I'll defend myself in that I can install and run Linux here, it runs the entire home network, I can compile from source, I love VI, and I must have CYGWIN tooling on my Windows box... But, I'm all that AND a spoiled Windows brat.) Jim

What I don;t get is _why_ there's this aversion to soldering. It is not difficult to solder thsi sort of thing. Anyone with the manual dexterity to fit IDC connectors, split and stip ribbon cable, etc, could do it. The equipment required is not hard to get or expensive (a good soldering iron costs less than many evaluation boards, it costs a lot less than the stuff you need to do microcomputer development). What is the problem? -tony

On 2/17/10, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote: I agree, but I'd like to add that I think it goes beyond simple neophobia - the activity is unforgiving of failure - a joint is good and works, or a joint is bad or marginal and it fails or works intermittently (which is worse). From trying to teach soldering, the unforgiving nature leads to student frustration. They hear it's "hard", the see it's "hard", they don't want to try, and if they do and it doesn't work, it tears down the confidence to move further. It takes practice and it takes persistence and it takes the willingness to risk failure - things that don't seem to be so popular lately (and mentioned in this article on the job market http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/201003/jobless-america-future) -ethan

I am convince that the best way to deal with such problems is to meet them head-on. The best 'cure' for an aversion to sodleirng is to grab a soldering iron (by the handle :-)) and solder up a PCB. 10 minutes later you'll wonder what all the fuss was about. -tony

Could you elaborate, please. What peoblems do you have? My expeirence of teaching others to solder is that the first problem are those who've read the typical hobbyist books/articles which warn about putting too much oslder on the joint and forming a 'bridge'. As a result they put far too little solder on and don't make a conneciton at all. The second common problem is dirty/oxidised components or PCB tracks. Flux will only go so far in cleaning things up. When soldering to untinned boards (e.g. stripboard), I often rub it over with 1000 grit wet-n-dry paper. The soldering iron is there only to heat the joint. It is not there to carry or 'paste' solder. You 'tim' the iron with a little oslder to improve the heat conduction, then use the iron to heat the parts you want to solder. And melt the solder onto the joint, not onto the iron. Another common problem is that the iron is simply not powerful enough. This is comoon if yuo are trying to solder (or worse desolder) on multi-layer PCBs with internal power and ground planes and there aren't 'thermal breaks' etched into said plains. It is almost impossible to solder such connections with a non-temparature-controlled iron. I don;t deny that solderless techniques are great -- if they work reliably. Wire-wrappiong is fine. IDC connectors are fine (if you get good ones) -- but they're a right pain to fit if you want anything other than the 'standard' order of wires in the cable. In other words, it's easy to fit a DB25 connector onoto a bit of ribbon cable, but more trouble than it's worth to cut and swap round wires to make a null modem. But if the solderless technique adds problems of its own (poor connections , excessive 'strays', etc) then you're better off soldering it. It'll be a lot quicker in the end. -tony

Joachim Thiemann wrote: Absolutely! And I think introducing more people and expanding the community is a great thing for everyone. Make this stuff more accessible is a great goal. Makes things cheaper, more available, better supported. More documentation, more web sites, more blogs. It's all good. I think there is also a certain group of people (present company excluded, of course) that don't want to allow the "newbies" in their precious "club." They feel that by removing the barriers to entry (maybe learning to solder, learning assembly language, learning basic electronics) that their self-worth is somehow diluted because the end goal is more easily attainable now w/o requiring these skills. Talk to the old grouchy hams about adding no-code tech ham radio licenses on your local repeater, if you want your ear beat for 1/2 hour. I enjoy sort of the sparkfun-methodology ---- off the shelf breakout boards, sensor modules, easily accessible headers for connecting things, and so on. It allows you to leverage very advanced technologies by providing an easy interface. Maybe that technology is GPS, or cellular, or whatever. For me, while learning this stuff is the real goal, it's nice to pick and choose the challenges, and avoid the roadblocks to progress whenever necessary. Keith

On 2/15/10 6:56 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote: The problems are in the Amigo and CS80 protocol timing details. http://www.hp9845.net/9845/projects/hpdrive/ figured it out, but thanks to it being closed-source you all get to figure it all out again At least you have the 'describe' parameters available now. Frankly, at the level of discussion I'm seeing, I doubt anything will come of this here.

On 2/15/10 9:22 PM, Ethan Dicks wrote: Take a look at the development tree for MESS. A lot of good work going on related to CBM disks right now there. http://mess.dorando.at/svn/

On 2/16/10, e.stiebler <emu at e-bbes.com> wrote: That's for VIC-20 and C-64 and newer machines. PETs (often badged as "CBM" machines after the earliest models) have a full-on parallel IEEE-488 interface, albeit implemented by the 6502 bit-banging VIAs and PIAs, not with TMS9914s or MC68488 or other GPIB-on-a-chip implementations. Look up CBM 2040/3040/4040/8050/8250/9060/9090 disk drives. There were also a number of printer models 4022 and such, plus a modem, plus third-party periperhals (TNW serial, etc). PET models include 2001-8, 2001-32N, 2001-32B, 3008, 3016, 3032, 4016, 4032, 8032, SuperPET, and more (the later "Business" line that I don't know as much about). The serialized IEEE-488 stuff came after 1982 or so. Parallel IEEE-488 started with the very first PET (even if the initial ROMs had problems with diskette drives and only worked reliably with printers), and continued for quite some time. Part of my interest is because I have a couple of D9060 and D9090 hard disks, but the original Tandon TM602S and TM603S drives are somewhat rare (I have more boards and enclosures than working original drives), but you can replace them with certain Seagate models - even those are getting somewhat rare. It would be "better" for the long term to come up with a newer parallel IEEE-488 drive than depend on finding then hacking a somewhat uncommon product from 20+ years ago. I've recently learned more about HP Amigo/CS80 drives, but I do know that implementing a modern microcontroller-based drive emulator for Commodore machines shouldn't have any bizarre pitfalls - just listen on the channel, speak when you are spoken to, and understand a dozen or two "CBM DOS" commands and do what's asked. The original implementation fits in a few K of 6502 machine code. A 16K AVR should be able to handle it, and if not, a 32K part, as long as there's enough RAM to sufficiently emulate the sub-file-level-access commands. For simply loading and saving PRG files and getting directories, that subset of CBM DOS shouldn't be hard at all to do. REL files are another matter. Those could easily take as long as the entire rest of the project and more. -ethan

On Feb 15, 2010, at 9:36 PM, keith wrote: Well, the skills are still necessary to do anything serious, so there's no *real* dilution involved. Lower barriers to entry is a good thing here. ...but not here. No-code Tech licenses have made 2m sound like the CB of the 1970s. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On Feb 15, 2010, at 11:40 PM, Keith M wrote: I saw a big spike in bad behavior when the requirement was dropped, both in MD and FL. I've not had a radio turned on in about two years, perhaps people are behaving a bit better now, but I don't have high hopes. CW was the one thing keeping ham radio from becoming "CB with a gazillion 'channels' and a huge power limit". I think it was a bad idea for the int'l community too. ;) -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

Hmmm.. While I have never wanted to exclude anyone from an elitist 'club' (I will share my knowledge freely with anyone who asks, I will point people in the right direction, and so on), I do feel very strongly that there are certain skills, and certain knowledge that are _essential_ if you want to do any form of electronics. Of course if you don't want to do electronics, then you may not need these skills, I have no problem with that. I would including soldering on that list. Virtually all electornic circuits are assembles with soldered joints. Those infernal solderless breadboards are a waste of space or worse. They often develop intermittant connections, the stray capacitacne is excessive, and so on. Learning t osodler well enough to work with through-hole components should ony take an afternoon anyway. It's not difficult. I would also claim you need to understand some basic electronics. Oh, sure you can wire up a few switches and LEDs to a microcontroller port. And then find that the built-in pull-ups of the microcontroller are not suffiecient to pull the signal really high all the time so you get noise pickup. Or you link up a relay as a load without the protection diode and end up zapping the microcontroller from the back emf when you turn it off. And so on. I was the equivalent of a no-code-tech for many years. The only reason I am not any more is that the morse code requirement has been removed. I never could get my ears round morse... I would argue that there shouldn't be artificial barriers to doing this sort of thing. The morse code requriement made sense once, IMHO it doesn't any more. Please don't give me that worn out argument that many people enjopy morse. Of course they do. I woul;dn't for an instant support a _ban_ on using morse code on amateur bands. Just as I wouldn't support a ban on driving cars with 'crash' gearboxes. But that doesn't mean I think double declutching should be included in the driving test. In the same way I don't think that just because people once made their own grid leak resistors, that we should still require beginners to make them today. Go out and buy resistors. But you still need to understnad what they are used for, and how to calculate (or estimate) the right value to use. There is, IMHO, one problem to totallu dumbing things down, and if this makes me elitist, so be it. It's this. If everyone thinks they can do electronic design just becasue they've plugged a sensor board into a microntroller board, then those people who really can design at the chip level or below are no longer valued, at least not by the majority. And that is a pity Als, if you're not careful, this 'plug a few modules together' methodology leads to a number of very poor, over-complex designs. And some of them may even end up as products :-( I am sure I've told you how I once showed a so-called designer who wanted to use a microcontrolelr module + input interface modules + ... as part of a control system that his problem could be solved using few lengths of wire and otherwise unused contacts on his relays and swithces. Hmmm... -tony

Well, I have no desire to exclude anybody from learning about electronics, that is for sure. Hmmm.. When I was a kid I had various educational electronics kits. The ones I liked the best, and the ones I learnt the most from were the Philips EE series. OK, you didn't have to solder anything, but you did get to handle real components, not little modules. And you built things like Wein bridge oscillators, superhet radios, and the like. I saw a modern electornics kit the other day in a shop. It proudly proclaimed 'build .. .n FM radio...' Upon investigatio it appears that there was an 'FM Radio Module' in the kit. All you had to do was connect up the battery, a couple of switches and a speaker. That's not 'building an FM radio'. Said Philips EE kits also had you making an FM radio. Using an FET, a few bipolar transistors, a varicap diode, and so on. OK, I;'ve been doing this for 30 years or more, but I find it a lot quicker to solder somethign up that to use one of those breadboards. And it's not hard to desolder things, make changes, experiment. The main problem is that those breadboard are terrible. It's not the clock speed that matters, it's the swtiching time of the IC. Most modern ICs have ouptus that switch so fast that when you combine them with the stray capacitances on the breadboard and the relatively high impedance power connections, you get power and ground lines bouncing all over the place. Without a _good_ 'scope it's impossible to know why your circuit doesn't work. If you stick to 4000 series CMOS you'll be alright, but modern 74xxx familes are pushing it. Really pushing it. -tony

On Mon, 15 Feb 2010, Chuck Guzis wrote: The whole point of the Arduino is to make it accessable to those that don't have the knowledge to build up their own board. It's a great beginner platform. g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.simpits.org/geneb - The Me-109F/X Project ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_!

On Tue, 16 Feb 2010, Adam Sampson wrote: Adam, SparkFun makes a dedicated USB/Serial device based on the FTDI chip used on the Arduino for about $14. You can get it in a 3.3v or 5v version. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.simpits.org/geneb - The Me-109F/X Project ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_!

On 16 Feb 2010 at 14:08, Keith wrote: And ready-to-deploy FTDI packages can be had that fit nicely in a DIP socket: http://www.futurlec.com/USB.shtml Or one can implement USB directly in just about any AVR: http://www.obdev.at/products/vusb/index.html --Chuck

I said 'can be bit-banged ove the lines of a parallel port' not 'nust be bit-banged...' :-). I've seen devices that connect to a USB port at one end and to a microcotnroller at the other (the one I saw was for PICs, and not surpisinging it contained a PIC and not much else..) I am sure such things exist for most microcontrollers. As an aside, I miss the 'user ports' that existed on some 1980s home computers (Commodore and the BBC micro being the obvious ones). It's a lot harder to play around with simple interfacing and control projects now. Me too. It really annoys me when I see a development board kludged into an applciation where it doesn't really fit. It would be a lot less effort (and money) to design the darn thing properly in the first place. -tony

Hey Gang: I have some Apple II related books I'm never going to use. The first person to offer postage plus 10% gets 'em. The only stipulation is this: You have to take the whole box. Here's what's inside: By Various publishers: Applesoft Isn't Hard by Doug Carlston Beneath_Apple DOS by by Worth & Lechner AppleSoft BASIC Toolbox by Wintermeyer A Bit of Applesoft BASIC by Crichfield & Dwyer The Beginners Guide to Apple II Assembly Language by Zimmerman Genuine Apple Books: ProDOS Supplement to the Apple //e Owners Manual Applesoft BASIC Programmers Reference Manual Vol 1 & 2 (//e only) AppleSoft Tutorial (for //e only) Apple II Super Serial Card Install & Operating Manual AppleMouse // Users Manual Apple II The DOS Manual If there's no interest, then all of this will probably get recycled, or, whatever. Reply off list please. . . . Jeff ____________________________________________________________ FREE 3D MARINE AQUARIUM SCREENSAVER - Watch dolphins, sharks & orcas on your desktop! Check it out at http://www.inbox.com/marineaquarium

Tony Duell wrote: I can fit it in, for development. I made some FPGA board for myself, simply because I think they are more flexible. So, I just have to wire up the 7516x drivers, and can start debugging. Yes, I intend to put a sfot cpu in it, so I can use standard toolchains for the software As I said before, I have them here, because I made them for this purpose. And I don't have a problem believing that you can wrap up a whole cpu board faster than I do ;-) Cheers

Tony Duell wrote: Trust me, it has. I simply took the biggest one which is supported by the free tools. If it runs then on the bog FPGA, it can be downsized and make cheaper, if there are really people looking for it. But as long as just few people are interested in it ... Anyway, my goal is the replace 2 floppies and one harddrive at the same time. So, that is a lot of bit banging in software on a uC. But let's see ;-)

Dave McGuire wrote: But as we are replacing disks which were on HP-IB, the normal few MBytes/sec you get out of SPI whould be sufficient. Or, what was the fastest HP-IB harddrive ?

RIght. In what way is the 4-bit interface more difficult to use? Is it just that it takes more I/O pins, or is there something inherently complicated about it? -tony

On 2/14/2010 12:43 PM, Tony Duell wrote: I'm not sure if I'm the list member in question, but uIEC/IDE uses the AVR ATMEGA1281 and provides an IDE/CF interface. However, the same firmware also supports SD cards (and is available as uIEC/SD). There has also been significant interest in the CBM world for an uIEEE solution, so I have sketched out a solution that utilizes the AVR. FOr the IEEE bus I am considering both the 75160/75161 versus a pair of input buffers and a pair of TPIC6B273 <http://focus.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/tpic6b273.pdf> high current output drivers. Currently, the 7516X units are a price premium, but the price difference is minimal. The uIEC firmware currently supports FAT16/FAT32 and SD/SDHC/IDE protocols already, I simply need to write the IEEE support. I'm happy to have help :-) jim

On 2/14/2010 5:07 PM, e.stiebler wrote: No, which is why I was considering the TPIC and some 74'245s We run the SPI clock at 1MHz, so we can clock in at ~ 125kBPS jim -- Jim Brain, Brain Innovations (X) brain at jbrain.com Dabbling in WWW, Embedded Systems, Old CBM computers, and Good Times! Home: http://www.jbrain.com