Re: Hardware Project

["Terence J. Boldt" <apple2@cgocable.net>]

>What's the status on this, now? I was also wondering, would it be possible
to
>make the board so it could be installed through the memory port (Slot 4) on
>the //c and //c+? This might be a way we //c owners could finally put
>something like a hard drive in our //c's.



Theoretically you could have ROM in the space where the RAM card is supposed
to go.  On a //c, the 256 bytes of ROM for each port is stored in one chip
along with BASIC, the machine language monitor etc.  To get a ROM drive to
boot in the space reserved for that special RAM, you would need to modify
the main ROM, burn a new one and replace it.  This certainly is possible and
seems quite interesting.  I don't know as much about the //c as I do the
//e, so anyone 'in the know' can feel free to correct me if I'm out in left
field here.

As for status on the project, I haven't worked on it this week, but as it
stands, it gets recognized by ProDOS as a single block based drive in
whichever slot you put it in.  If you write to it, you get a write-protect
error, but unfortunately if you read from it you eventually get an I/O error
because I have a bug in the code and a poor partial disk image in the big
ROM.  I'll probably dive back into it on the weekend.  This week has been
busy so far with non-Apple II related stuff like work. :~(

-- Ter