Alex Freed wrote:
Michael Kent wrote:What PC platform? I must be completely confused, because I thought the Carte Blanche was an Apple II card. If it's a PC card, then never mind.Of course it is. However developing of the bit file that tells an FPGA what to do can only be done on a modern computer with vast resources. Say at least 1 GB of RAM, etc. So the configuration end up on a PC (or a *NIX box). It appears easier to send it over via a wire to the CB inside an Apple 2 than to transfer to the Apple media first and then use the 6502 to transfer it to the FPGA. Or put on a memory card and let CB copy it to its flash memory as we are now doing.Even if no development is done and one uses a downloaded new configuration it is likely to be a PC/Mac/whatever used for the downloading. So the same logic applies.
Perhaps I'm unusual, but I doubt it--My Apple //e is in a different room from my PC, and I like it that way! I use CiderPress with HD ProDOS floppies and CF cards to move files and volumes back and forth between the PC and the Apple II conveniently. That's why I've expressed so much interest in a purely Apple II-based method of reconfiguring the Carte Blanche. I expect to be loading pre-existing configurations for use at least ten times more frequently than I would be loading a newly developed configuration for trial. And for most of those configuration loads, I won't have a PC tethered to my Apple II--or at least that's what I would much prefer. I think of the Carte Blanche as a "chameleon card" that can be reconfigured quickly to become something else I need at the moment... Perhaps others think of it as a more statically configured card. -michael NadaNet 3.0 for Apple II parallel computing! Home page: http://home.comcast.net/~mjmahon/ "The wastebasket is our most important design tool--and it's seriously underused."