Alex Freed wrote:
mdj wrote:It's a shame that the JTAG to PC interface has never beenstandardised.In the old days the parallel port "Wiggler" type JTAG was a de facto standard. Once the move to USB started everybody came with their own version. The real shame is that the USB interface is really cheap to make but Xilinx put an extra chip in their cable just to hide the protocol! How much money do they get by selling a $15 item for $300 to justify the bad feelings a lot of people have about it? I have to mention that Altera did exactly the same with their cable but the secret didn't last very long. Now you can buy a clone of the Altera's USB JTAG cable for $19 on e-bay!I'm pleased you've come up with an alternative non-developer way of reprogramming the board. I was going to suggest that a 'core' firmware be developed that allowed access from the actual Apple II host, but your solution is just as good, if not better.I was thinking about using the Apple for it but the bit file doesn't fit a 5.25" floppy. Requiring a hard disk is worse than the JTAG adapter :)
You are perhaps not considering that someone who would spend $200 on a CB almost certainly already has a hard disk or equivalent on his system. ;-) -michael NadaNet 3.0 for Apple II parallel computing! Home page: http://home.comcast.net/~mjmahon/ "The wastebasket is our most important design tool--and it's seriously underused."