Re: kfest a2 USB card real?

[Raffzahn@yahoo.de (Hans Franke)]

"Mike Pender" <mpender@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<V8hWa.1554$rZ4.948@nwrddc03.gnilink.net>...
> "Hans Franke" <Raffzahn@yahoo.de> wrote in message
> 113e9e73.0307311200.881875a@posting.google.com">news:113e9e73.0307311200.881875a@posting.google.com...
> > omashiroi@yahoo.com (Adam Barr) wrote in message
> > news:<4b54956e.0307300509.73833274@posting.google.com>...

> > The PS/2 adaptor is a nifty little thing... and it might be still some
> > time until the AnyCard can do a mouse good enough to fool classic A2
> > Software.

> Classic 8-bit software looks for a series of identifying bytes ($Cn03, 05,
> 07?) located in the $Cn00 - $CnFF address space assigned to each card.

No doubt about that, but that's only half the deal.

> As long as you provide for the ability to change the contents of those
> locations based on the peripheral device attached to your USB port, it
> shouldn't take long at all -- its actually pretty easy to fool 8-bit s/w.
> :-)

Actualy the AnyCard will provide a Phantom slot solution for 8 Bit
slot Apples (][ until //e), and if a mouse is found (and mouse support
enabled), an unused slot (CnXX) will just look like a mouse card. The
Idea is not only to support _one_ USB device at a time, but rather
whatever is thre. So one Anycard ma provide a Mouse, a Printer
Interface and mass storage (aka floppies, memory sticks, hard drives
or CD-ROMs) at the same time, by mapping virtual cards to unused
slots.

And since we have 512 MB for drivers, we got plenty room for a lot of
variations to be selected from.

The problems start when cards have their own processors and work in
paralell to the Apple's 6502 - and that's what happenes on the mouse
card. Also interrupts are somewhat complicated to handle on 8 Bit
Apples (again true for the mouse card).

Well, as long as we are only talking about the mouse interface in
passive mode, there's no problem, but as soon as we want the
coordinates to be correct even if the mouse hasn't been called for
some time, or if we want to use the interrupt driven data update,
we'll have a long way to go.

Running GS/OS on the other hand simplifies all the driver issue,
includeing a USB mouse shouldn't be any big deal (at least that's what
Sheppy told me), but tahn again, I see no real need for the GS to get
a USB mouse - ADB mice are still a dime a dozend at thrift stores (ok,
maybe a buck a mouse), and when running GS/OS the integration on a ROM
3 doesn't need a slot at all.

But that's quite some theoretical burp - let's first get the card to
work and get some basic USB driver running.

Gruss
H.