rg.jones@rogers.com wrote:
While we are on the USB topic - I can see a use for a Apple USB device adapter card that would turn the Apple II into a cool USB peripheral for the PC ... Possibly providing support for direct access to Apple II hardware from software emulators running on the PC.
I've got an existing design that consists of a Cypress EZ-USB FX chip (USB slave) on a small PCB with ~40 pins of I/O on an IDE header, powered off the USB port.
I'd imagine it would be fairly straight-forward to connect that to an Apple II prototype card to do exactly as you suggest.
Whilst I've got about 20 (blank) PCBs, unfortunately there's a few problems with it. We've built 3 or 4 working boards but the EZ-USB footprint is slightly too small, and there's some no-connect pins that (IIRC) need to be grounded. So hand-assembly is a must and we've only had about 50% yield so far. :( Also, apparently the FX chip has been obsoleted by Cypress.
Pity, because development is done via SDCC (a free C compiler) and firmware for the FX can be downloaded from the host driver.
Regards, -- | Mark McDougall | "Electrical Engineers do it | <http://members.iinet.net.au/~msmcdoug> | with less resistance!"