Re: A2 5.25" drive on a PC?

[salfter@salfter.diespammersdie.dyndns.org (Scott Alfter)]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

In article <dlv9lt$kv8$1@rumours.uwaterloo.ca>,
Tim Haynes  <timhaynes@alumni.NO.SPAM.PLEASE.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>We all know that a PC cannot read/write an A2 disk because of basic 
>MFM/GCR differences.
>
>What about the possibility of putting together a specialized cable that 
>would adapt a standard A2 5.25" drive to a PC's serial port?  The cable 
>would also have to pull power from somewhere - possibly from a molex 
>connector hooked into the PC's power supply?  And then we'd need some 
>specialized PC software to actually do the reading/writing.

A serial port would be way too slow (maximum speed is only 115.2 kbps), and
they're disappearing from many computers.  (Macs haven't had 'em since
whenever the iMac was introduced, and they're disappearing from x86 boxen as
well...neither of my HP notebooks have them.)

What would be more interesting would be a USB-to-Disk-II dongle that has
enough hardware (a 6502-compatible processor or core and some software to
read/write/format GCR).  You could ask it to read or write a particular
block and it'd do so.  For dealing with the various anti-fair-use schemes
that were devised, the firmware for the dongle would be transferred in from
the host at runtime so it can be changed from the default if needed.

  _/_
 / v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail)
(IIGS( http://alfter.us/            Top-posting!
 \_^_/ rm -rf /bin/laden            >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFDg9NlVgTKos01OwkRAk1MAKDpG9VSW9K1aczuvcAaC4KlYi4cvgCg7n9H
fCJrhlxnl/9PQKVQK+X4Kx8=
=EWKR
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----