Re: Apple2 USB Stick interface with Vinculum chip

[bieling@terra.es]

mdj wrote:
>
> 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,
> it seems somewhere between unlikely and impossible to handle reading/
> writing an image off a FAT filesystem.
>

The reading/writing/dealing-with the FAT filesystem is no more
difficult than sending commands alike mkdir, open file, etc to the
vinculum chip. Not only there's not a "massive increase in
complexity" :  it's going to be the easiest thing in the world to deal
with the FAT filesystem, even a CLI to the vinculum chip would be
ultra-simple to write even in basic that would allow you to deal with
it in an almost MS-DOS like way straight from your apple II keyboard..

> 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.

No Matt, not so. This is not handled by the Apple II code. And there's
not any additional action/code/anything required in order to use a USB-
CF reader with this, nor a hard disk, nor a digital camera, nor an
ipod, nor whatever as long as it behaves as a USB standard mass
storage device : <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
USB_mass_storage_device_class>

--Jorge.