Re: Hardware musings

["Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com>]

Linards Ticmanis wrote:
> Michael J. Mahon wrote:
>
> > The only thing you can really eliminate is the boot ROM.  The software
> > will still have to run the 2MHz state machine and communicate with the
> > PC to dump off nibble streams (that the PC could decode/encode with its
> > own RWTS.  Essentially every function that exists in the Apple must be
> > provided--except the boot ROM.
>
>
> Just sampling the read line with a 2MHz (or rather 2,040969MHz) clock
> should suffice, shouldn't it? You could then run the state machine in
> software on the PC side -- leisurely after-the-fact. The same goes for
> writing: you'd run the state machine in software first, then write a
> whole track at once, directly from the bit-buffer.
>
> That would be more of a "USB Catweasel" (Mouseweasel?) approach.

That is exactly what I was planning on doing before I found out that
the PC parallel port couldn't do it because of the "pseudo-ISA"
implementation.

I then considered capturing the samples in a shift register, but the
more I thought about it, the more I would have preferred to just
interface the PC to a Disk ][ Controller card...

Ultimately, I stopped working on it and turned to other ways of moving
Apple disk data to/from the PC.

-michael

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