Re: I wonder if it would be complicated to design...

[Chuck Morris <chuckwmorris@gmail.com>]

On Thursday, May 9, 2013 6:54:12 AM UTC-5, Bill Buckels wrote:
> Also, the next run of CF3000s  is scheduled later this year. Rich Dreher has 
> 
> put lots of these out in the aprox. 10 years.

Just to clarify for those who may not know much about Rich's cards, his original CFFA card first came out about 10 years ago, and was (insofar as I can tell) essentially equivalent to a Microdrive card in terms of its functionality.  Rich produced a number of runs of that card before discontinuing it and developing a replacement card for it, the CFFA3000.  So far there have been 2 production runs of the CFFA3000, and a 3rd run is planned in the near future.

The CFFA3000 however includes functionality that goes well beyond that of either the original CFFA card, or the Microdrive.  While you can use the card in the same manner as those cards, the CFFA3000 also adds support for USB sticks, and more importantly adds the ability to use disk image files on either a CF card or USB stick as if they were the physical disks.  This allows the Apple to use DOS 3.3, ProDos, Pascal and CP/M disk images as well as images representing hard drive volumes.  It also is capable of booting NIB images.

If you're considering adding a card for CF support, in my opinion the CFFA3000 is the best all-around option available.