Re: Apple2 USB Stick interface with Vinculum chip

["RedskullDC" <RDC@oz.org>]

Hi Matt,

"mdj" <mdj.mdj@gmail.com> wrote in message 
1177748757.401373.66980@h2g2000hsg.googlegroups.com">news:1177748757.401373.66980@h2g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
> I suppose it would make it easier to ship HD images from emulators to
> the target media, but considering the massive increase in complexity,
> it doesn't really seem worth it. Particularly since the design seems
> to indicate all this work would need to be done by Apple II firmware,

The FAT filesystem is actually handled by the firmware on the Vinculum chip 
itself.
http://www.vinculum.com/documents/fwspecs/DS_VNC1L_FW_VDAP.pdf

It presents a simple stream based interface, with File Open/close, 
read/write, position
commands.
It also has a lower level block read/write access.

If I stick with using a 32MB prodos image under FAT, it wouldn't be too
difficult to convert the block number in prodos read/wirte calls into a file 
offest
on the FAT side and simply read/write the data that way.

> it seems somewhere between unlikely and impossible to handle reading/
> writing an image off a FAT filesystem.
???
GSOS does it already with MSDOS.FST

With the Vinculum chip, the workings of FAT filesystem are hidden
from the Apple2 side anyway.

>
> It seems more sensible to stick with traditional partitioning schemes,
> and push tool support onto the more powerful platform. CiderPress
> handles all this nicely for Windows, and traditional tools on UNIX
> variants can handle most of the data shipping requirements.
>
> Firmware on the Apple II side would be better dedicated to handling
> the variety of USB media types - for instance memory card readers
> which would allow it to read CF cards.

There is already the CFFA to read CF cards.

The vinculum will talk to other USB devices, so anything is possible I 
guess.

Leslie