Re: APPLE ][ Clone-Project?

["Bryan Villados" <news002@macgeek.org>]

Hey, something just occured to me after reading the ENIAC article...

In the late 80's, I worked at Phoenix Technologies as a ROM-BIOS engineer,
writing code for the IBM compatible ROM-BIOS. We used to test our code on a
motherboard shipped to us by the client. We'd stick the board onto a wooden
platform, pop our ROM-BIOS in, pull the Intel 80386 processor out, then
connect a long ribbon cable to the CPU socket, the other end connected to a
box called an in-circuit emulator, or ICE. The ICE is basically an emulated
Intel 80386 processor, but providing a debugging interface to a PC so that
you can see everything in real-time, such as registers, cache memory on the
chip, and even the ROM and RAM locations on the motherboard. The ICE would
then be connected to a PC with a serial cable. On the PC, you'd run a piece
of software that would show you all the data, and let you do things like set
breakpoints within the ROM-BIOS and RAM for tracing the code, and see the
registers update in real-time.

I've always believed that the 6502 chip was the guy that gave me the
foundation for understanding processors, which would eventually land me the
job at Phoenix Tech. I don't know if this has been done, but it would be a
really neat project to build a ICE box that could replace the 6502, 65C02,
or similar chip in an Apple II, and have it connect to a serial interface on
a PC or Macintosh, and be able to do the same things I mentioned earlier.
This would be such a cool tool for schools to teach kids about processors in
how they interface with software and hardware. And, seeing there's tons of
Apple II's still in the schools, they could actually use them once again,
this time in electronics classes. So that would mean there may be some sort
of market for the ICE box. It's much better than those older CPU simulators
used in the 70's and 80's.

--- Bryan

"Paul Schlyter" <pausch@saaf.se> wrote in message
news:a389tv$i4r$1@merope.saaf.se...
> In article <3C56E5C1.4ACEC11F@eric-bruecklmeier.de>,
> E.-R. Bruecklmeier <spamport@eric-bruecklmeier.de> wrote:
>
> > Andrew Trotman schrieb:
> >
> >> This seems like the currently cheapest wasy to solve this problem at
the
> >> moment.  They are all original components and when I finally blow one
up
> >> I'll fix it from bits on the other motherboards.
> >
> > It is more the academical interesst what drives me.
>
> It was a similar interest which motivated the Eniac-on-a-chip project
> some 5 years ago (these links are still alive):
>
> http://www.upenn.edu/computing/printout/archive/v12/4/chip.html
> http://www.ee.upenn.edu/~jan/eniacproj.html
>
>
> > I think it is an interessting project to clone an apple ][+ let's say
> > on an atmel MEGA-AVR and a Xilinx 95C216 - which is can still use the
> > original ROMs and can serve the original cards and peripherals.
> >
> >> There are some "problems" with a 100% modern compatible:
> >>     Where are you going to get a "modern" 1978 style floppy disk drive?
> >>     What OS are you going to run? Will DOS 3.3 run on a 50Gb hard
drive?
> >>     100% compatible with what?  ][ ][plus //e //c or IIgs?
> >
> > ][+ would be enough.
> >
> >>     There are no "modern" versions of some of the original chips!!
> >>     The custom chips no longer exist so a clone may be physicaly large.
> >
> > I don't plan to use modern versions of the old chips - i want to build
> > something like a "hardware emulator" of an apple ][+ which behaves to
> > the outer world like a real one.
>
> --
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> Paul Schlyter,  Swedish Amateur Astronomer's Society (SAAF)
> Grev Turegatan 40,  S-114 38 Stockholm,  SWEDEN
> e-mail:  pausch at saaf dot se
> WWW:     http://hem.passagen.se/pausch/index.html
>          http://home.tiscali.se/~pausch/