Re: An USB interface for Disk2?

[David Wilson <mcs6502@gmail.com>]

On Oct 24, 11:50 am, Mike Willegal <m...@willegal.net> wrote:
> I'm thinking that reading and writing sectors could be done with a fast
> modern micro-controller, though I expect that there might be issues with
> some copy protected software.  Power could come from a spare Apple II
> power supply and the connection to a modern PC could be through USB
> using a FTDI chip.  Seems like with a little additional effort, a real
> disk II could even be driven directly by one of those Apple II emulator
> programs.

If you use an FTDI chip you effectively have a COM port on the PC. It
is like using an external USB to RS232 adapter. The board would need
to implement a subset of an Apple II and most of the Disk ]
[ controller card - you might as well use a real Apple II.

More interesting would be a board that implements the USB mass storage
protocol and makes the 5.25" disk appear to be a 280 block drive. The
advantage of this is that no driver is required for Windows/MacOSX/
Linux/Solaris etc etc. Programs like Ciderpress could access the disk
directly. The disadvantages would be no support for copy protected
software and the difficulty in actually designing and programming the
board.