Upcoming project: virtual hard drive for //c and IIgs

[Peltier Cedric <pcedric@hotmail.com>]

Seeing my old //c lying together with an old PC on the same desk, I 
remembered the need of a mass storage for the //c.
This is how the project began.
I made a specific cable to connect the smartport of the //c to the // 
port of the PC, and started to write the software to emulate an hard 
drive for the //c.
All seem to work fine now: from the //c I can format, read, write, and 
even boot from the emulated 32 mega bytes hard drive (under prodos).
So it's time to do this announce, I think this project will be of 
interest for some of you, right ?

Pros:
- cheap
- expandable
- use of old hardware
- no need of drivers nore hacks on the Apple 2 side

Cons:
- require a 486 class PC, no pentium
- the PC is dedicated when running the emulation
- can run only under DOS in real mode without any loaded driver
- can't be daisy chained with other hardware for now

Status:
- Not released yet, require timings autodetection

Upcoming evolution:
- add timings autodetection

Futur or possible evolutions:
- add support for more than one emulated hard drive
- add emulation for floppy drive, so we can use floppy images library
- add support for pentium and upwards, based on internal cpu tick counter
- add daisy chain support for existing devices like disk //c or Unidisk 
3.5 (require more elaborated cable)
- porting the project to embeded platform to get a small real device

I have to find some additionnal Apple hardware like disk //c, Unidisk 
3.5, and an Apple IIgs to test and add daisy chain support.

Cheers,
C�dric.