Re: Ideas for //c (rom 0) mods

["Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com>]

BLuRry wrote:

> Once I'm done with this, I should have a //c that no longer resembles
> an explosive threat to air safety, and can travel with a //c that will
> not be subject to too much extra annoying TSA scrutiny (really,
> someone called it a typewriter.  I died a little inside).  You have no
> idea how much those people freak out when the brick-on-leash, aka a
> mega-huge transformer with a lot of wire coming off of it, goes
> through the x-ray.  So I'd love to get rid of that part and lighten
> the load a little (lot!)

That surprises me, since all modern laptops--and almost everything
else, too--has a "power brick".  Many printers have "bricks" of similar
size.

Furthermore, what you will have inside the case will look very much
like a power brick (though a switching one instead of a 60Hz
transformer).

Of course, in dealing with the TSA you can have *anything* happen,
depending on the person and place.  In fact, the most annoying thing
about the TSA is its utter unpredictability...

I just recently went through security twice (in Seattle and Wichita)
with a 17-board AppleCrate, packed in nested cardboard boxes with
Masonite panels in between.  In Seattle, it didn't raise an eyebrow
as it went through the x-ray.  In Wichita, they wanted to open both
boxes and eyeball it--even though it doesn't look anything like an
explosive device and I provided photos of the 'Crate set up and in use.

Your theory is as good as mine, but I suspect that the folks in
Seattle see a lot of PC boards going through, and they are a rarity
in Wichita...

Explosives (liquid and semi-solid) have a distinct x-ray signature,
and PC boards look nothing like them.  Of course, they could be worried
that it contains a sharp object, but I imagine that it's just the
unfamiliarity of the object that gets their attention.

If all this trouble and uncertainty about travel did one iota of
good, it would be less annoying.

> Phase 3)  This is the odd part where you start wondering if I'm crazy,
> and where I'll need a lot of help
> -Remove floppy drive, replace with some bizzare contraption inspired
> by "Semi-virtual disk"
> -Which begs the question, are there any micro-controllers that emulate
> floppies like SVD did?  Another totally kooky idea is something that
> has the timing to emulate the boot 0 phase to push 256 bytes of loader
> code into ram and execute a much cooler program that is less timing-
> dependent and reuses the floppy signals to stream data in a way that
> doesn't need to mimic physical media in favor of a larger storage
> scheme based on IDE-style flash.  I think the only real barrier might
> be the //c woz machine part.  Any way to bypass and go straight for
> the raw signals?

Sure, you can transfer data just like a smartport device.

And the boot code can be any length that doesn't require a seek--
which is not a problem if you're *emulating* a disk...

> -Pie in sky idea: Microdrive with a flash card that mounts in the
> floppy drive opening.  Is there any way to tap the //c bus on a rom-0
> board to create a virtual "slot"?  I seem to remember that the //c had
> its own rom that more or less occupied the bank-switch rom reserved
> for physical cards in other ]['s, which leads me to believe that no
> bankswitching == no support for card rom == no possibility to hack a
> slot.  Which is a bummer, but understandable.

There should be pretty easy workarounds for ROM, since you will be
changing it in any case.  All the signals needed for a slot are there
or can be synthesized, so that should be possible.

-michael

AppleCrate: An Apple II "blade server"!
Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/

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